Creating custom sound events in gnome, and tracking them in Control Center

[Pat Smith <psmith imrm com>]

Hello list,

  I have been a long time user of gnome and ximian gnome for my
desktop.  I recently decided to add sound for events that were not
already listed in control center -> multimedia -> Sound -> Sound
Events.  Creating the .soundlist under /etc/sound/events was no problem
at all, and my additions showed up immediately upon restart of my
desktop environment.  Unfortunately this is where my problem begins.

According to the documentation:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/whitepapers/SystemConfig/sound.html

I realize that I am supposed to add some code to the existing
application, namely, an include <gnome.h> and then the gnome_trigger_do
() function with appropriate options.  So here are my
questions/concerns...

  1.  For every sound event that I want to add do I have to re-write and
re-compile the application in question?  This seems like a very scary,
hands on task for Joe Average User.  It is definitely not high on the
ease of use list, which I thought was a priority for the gnome desktop.

  2.  Where is the documentation.  I mean great, documentation exists
for getting your new sound event to show up rather nicely on the control
center, the problem is no good documentation that exists on either
gnome_trigger_do or how to correctly implement it.  The only way I could
even get an inkling was to download balsa source and see how it was
implemented there.  I don't mind working hard but I hate working hard
unneccesarily.

  3. OK, enuff rant.  Is there someway I could develop a kicker program,
maybe something that would execute before the desired application was
called. Like if I wanted to call gnome-terminal.  Maybe I could have a
small script aliased that first did the trigger and then executed the
gnome-terminal eg:

<psuedocode>
	#Kicker file pseudo code
	include <gnome.h>;
	gnome_trigger_do ("", "program", "gnome-terminal", "startup", NULL);
	exec gnome-terminal
</end psuedocode>

  I know what I just wrote may be very flawed but I am not really a
gnome developer, just a linux hack and sysadmin.  But certainly it may
be usable as a starting point for addressing the question.

  Maybe your answer is to wait until gnome2 for ximian is released and
then all my problems will be solved.  If that is the case great that's
what I'll do.  If not then could someone help me get on track???

-- 
Pat Smith
UNIX System Admin
Iron Mountain Corp.
1000 Campus Drive
Collegeville, PA 19426
610-831-2574