xhippo is a minimalist, low-resource using, frontend to various commandline media playing programs.
Since xhippo does not use gtkdialog, but is instead compiled in C, it is particularly resource efficient, particularly in terms of the GUIs memory usage, compared to most small music players on offer in Puppy. It is also surprising flexible and extensible.
Steps used configuring xhippo as a GUI frontend music player using lame and aplay for mp3 playback:
Create the following shell script (xhippo_mp3), make it executable, and put it iin the executable path somewhere (such as /usr/bin or /use/local/bin:
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#!/bin/sh
lame --decode -q 2 "$1" - 2>/dev/null | aplay >/dev/null 2>&1
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type:mp3:xhippo_mp3:g
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type:mp3:madplay:i
Note that you can drag and drop directories of media files into the xhippo window. Alternatively, right-clicking in the xhippo GUI provides another method for quickly adding songs or directories. I don't think it will iterate through a hierarchy of directories, however, though I haven't fully investigated that as yet. You can however drag a whole series of directories into its window at once and it automatically produces a giant playlist, which you can play at random. The program provides a pause button, the ability to minimise the GUI, and to randomise playback.
xhippo can also be configured to play mp4 videos via mplayer. If you wish to do so, simply add the following extra line to xhippo.config:
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type:mp4:mplayer -really-quiet
If you add the option -fs to the above then mplayer will start fullscreen (you can press keyboard key F to toggle in and out of fullscreen mode). Please refer to mplayer man page for other options and keyboard control keys (e.g. P to Pause):
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mpl ... %20CONTROL
In similar fashion, other media types can be catered for. In fact xhippo can execute almost any program and control any processes...
mcewanw