Wed 09 November 2011
projects

Tramp - Tray MPD Client

Tramp - Tray Mpd Client

The primary function of a music player is to play audio files. mpd does just that, and Tramp is a minimalistic client with only the bare necessities needed to listen to music.

Features:

  • Tray icon
  • Playlist creation
  • Playlist selection
  • Seeking with mousewheel

Everything else is controlled with mpc by binding actions to multimedia keys.

Get the Source

There are no prebuilt binaries. Just grab the source:

git clone git://bostik.iki.fi/src/tramp.git

and build. The source tree contains required files to build into a debian/ubuntu package. Install the needed build dependencies and make your own package:

sudo aptitude install autotools-dev debhelper-dev libmpd-dev libgtk-3-dev fakeroot

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

The code, including comments, is just ~1600 lines of C.

Screenshots

Because tramp is a minimalistic client, there won't be much in way of screenshots. However, these are the things you're likely to see when using tramp:

Systray icon: ? ; Main window for playlist selection: ?

In addition, the current playlist is shown in tooltip.

Using Tramp

  • Left-clicking on tray icon pops up the window
  • Right-clicking on window hides it
  • Right-clicking on tray icon also hides window, if it's shown
  • Each scrollwheel click on main window seeks 15 seconds

Configuration Examples

When using tramp, controlling mpd is meant to be done with hardware keys. Practically all modern keyboards sport a variety of "multimedia keys" that may be bound to perform actions of all sorts.

My controls for mpd and audio, from fluxbox keybinding file look like this:


None XF86Forward    :ExecCommand mpc next
None XF86Back       :ExecCommand mpc prev
None XF86AudioPlay  :ExecCommand mpc play
None XF86AudioMute  :ExecCommand mpc stop
Mod1 XF86AudioPlay  :ExecCommand mpc toggle
None XF86AudioRaiseVolume   :ExecCommand aumix -v +2
None XF86AudioLowerVolume   :ExecCommand aumix -v -2

While the unmodified keys require no explanation, I have bound Alt+AudioPlay to "toggle", which really is just mpd's way of saying "Pause/Un-Pause".