Re: Some ideas...

[Conrad Parker <conradp cse unsw edu au>]

On Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 07:04:45PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Michael Adams">
> 
> > For example, when a user moves over a button, we already have the
> > 'pre-light' function, but what about a soft 'pop.'
> 
> Dynamic, morphing sound for an operating environment has intrigued me for
> years...
> 
> Now, imagine that kind of dynamism integrated with a desktop environment. We
> already have dynamic graphical interfaces... :) Strangely enough, when
> Conrad first told me about some of the sounds he was making for Gnome, I
> joked about this, and he came back with the ideas he'd a;ready had about
> this -> and seriously! :D

eek, time to trawl through my sent-mail archives ... :)

Basically I was talking about having complementary "granules" of sound
for each interface event. The way Gnome already works is that it has
sounds hooked up to particular gtk events, such that for example
selecting the "Log out" option from the panel menu triggers the "menu
activation" sound, overlayed anywhere up to half a second later by the
"question dialog" sound, then followed by the "action button" sound
when you press OK or Cancel.

With the existing Gnome sounds (glass breaking, loud beeps etc) this
kind of behaviour starts sounding _really_ messy. Whereas when the
sounds actually fit together, it actually starts sounding good.

For this reason, the sounds I did a while ago at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~conradp/sounds/gnome-audio/
were mostly made with similar softsynth settings (similar harmonics)
but with differently shaped pitch and filter cutoff envelopes. For
example, the "question dialog" sound was made with a pitch envelope
that tips up at the end like it's asking a question, but otherwise
has similar characteristics to the normal "dialog" sounds, all of
which in turn work with the button and menu activation sounds when
they're triggered.

One thing I noticed after using those sounds for a while is that it
became *annoying* that "OK" and "Cancel" both trigger the same sample
in Gnome dialogs. When the dialogs really sound like they're asking
or telling you something, it sounds *wrong* that you give them the
same audio response either way.

This is going towards some kind of semantic audio interface -- it
really does start to feel like you are communicating audibly with your
computer. It'd be great to exploit this a bit more. Like Michael
described it, once you're used to it you notice when the interface is
"muted". It's actually noticeable that passing over menu options
doesn't make any sound. Jeff called this behaviour "tactile audio"
which is a pretty cool way to describe it :)

Anyway ... this is something to keep in mind for making sound themes.
As for extending how sounds are used in Gnome, it's good that it already
has hooks for info/warning/error dialogs, and it could be useful to make
some more semantic definitions, eg. separate sounds for "OK", "Cancel",
"Help" etc., and some new gtk-event definitions for button and menu
highlights etc. 

Conrad.