Gnometoaster Documentation
December 20. 1999

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Using Gnometoaster

Below, you can see a typical screenshot of Gnometoaster:

Here's an overview of how it works:

Area 1: This is the actual layout of your computer's filesystem. All folders (such as /bin /etc /usr) will show up here. You can drag files and directories from this pane, or the one to the right, to Area 2.

Area 2: This is Gnometoaster's "Internal Filesystem" This is a filesystem that shows the relative layout of the CD you are creating.

So, to add files to the CD you wish to create, you would drag files and folders from Area 1 to Area 2 or Area 3. You can also make new directories on your CD Layout by right-clicking in Area 3 and selecting New Directory.

Area 4, the toolbar, has five items: First, an Exit button, then Preferences, Import, Clear Disc and Record. Record goes to the Record Menu, which can also be accessed by clicking on the red button in the lower left. The Clear Disc button is for users who want to blank a CD-RW. This is a handy way to test if your configuration is correct. The Preferences menu must be run first, to set up the CD-ROM, the Writer, and the temp directories that must exist. The Preferences dialogue is handled in detail in the Preferences section. The Import button attempts to import the previous sessions of the CDR in your drive. You can then add new sessions while keeping all of the previous sessons data.

Your First CD Operation with Gnometoaster

Before we do anything fancy (like Drag&Drop MP3 files, or previewing pre-cached audio tracks) lets just do the most basic CD operation, clearing a CD-RW Disc.

Clearing a disc is very straight-forward. Just click on the clear disc button. This will change the lower half of the screen. You should see several choices: one is to record (which will do nothing, as we haven't selected anything to record yet) and the choice that we're interested in, clear disc. Once you click the "Clear Disc" button, a progress dialog will pop up like this one:

The bottom-right pane is the output window. It lets you know what is actually going on. Once you hit the button, things should start spewing to this window, a count-down will begin, and then the CD-RW LED should go on solid for a minute or two, while the disc's TOC is cleared.

After the disc ejects, some red test will be displayed in the output window confirming that the disc has been cleared successfully. Congrats, you're done. Gnometoaster works, and the above documentation wasn't full of (too many) bugs.


A More Advanced Example (Creating a backup of a directory)

Now that we've correctly configured the CD-RW, and Gnometoaster works, let's try something a little more advanced. Let's make a data CD using information on your hard drive.

First, in the top left pane (Area 1 of the top image) expand the Unix Tree by clicking on the plus. Now, select a directory from the ones listed. I always have a /public that contains the good files that I've downloaded (Like Gnometoaster!) If you have such a directory, that would be a good choice. One the directory is selected, drag it from Area 1 to Area 2 (The Internal Filesystem used by Gnometoaster)

Now, the directory should appear on the tree of the Internal Filesystem, and the capacity indicator Fill State (running across the bottom of Gnometoaster) will have changed from 0MB of 650 to a bigger number (100MB or however much you have in that directory)

With your directory selected, click on the lower-left button labeled Track Edit to see if things are shaping up nicely. If everything looks okay (The Track size is greater than 0) then lets try burning the disc.

Click on the CD Icon, pictured bottom left of the screen. This will bring up the following screen:


This time, instead of clicking on clear disc, select Record. A dialog window will pop up showing the progress. Once the CD has reached 100%, the dialog will disappear and the CD will eject. The output window (lower right) will display a message that the CD has recorded successfully.

A Complex Example, Creating an Audio disc using an Audio CD, Wav Files and an MP3

Up to this point, nothing that we've done has been overly remarkable. This is especially true if you're used to a Windows-based program such as Easy-CD Creator. However, by using a combination of command-line programs as Gnometoaster's base, it offers a few features that are currently unavailable in all but the newest CDR packages on any platform. One of these key points is it's excellent CD Audio disc creation capabilities.

For backup purposes, one could simply copy an Audio CD. This would be done by selecting CDROM drives, and then selecting /dev/cdrom (or equivalent.) After selecting "Track Edit" from the bottom left, you can then select the desired audio tracks, and drag them into the track selection box pictured below. At this point, Gnometoaster does something special, it precaches the audio tracks. This will be discussed shortly.

Precaching is a great idea for several reasons: First, it makes buffer under runs virtually nonexistent, as Gnometoaster pulls the audio track from the Hard drive rather than the CD-ROM. Secondly, this makes creating a CD of mixed artists very easy, as once the track is cached, you can pop out the CD and throw in a new one. Lastly, it makes creating a combination on Audio Tracks, Wav's and MP3's into one CD a snap!

In preparation for our last CD creation tutorial, you will need an audio CD, some Wav files and an MP3 or two. You can get good (legal) MP3's from http://www.mp3.com. Here you will find many music samples from budding artists, so try some out!

Next, fire up Gnometoaster. Put your audio disc in the drive, click on CDROM Drives -> /dev/cdrom. Select two tracks from the CD-ROM drive, and drag them to Gnometoaster's track view (see above.) Now Gnometoaster will precache the selected audio tracks. This will take a while depending on the CDDA capabilities of your drive, and the length of the tracks. When the precaching is done, click on Unix Tree, and find the Wav files that you want to use as audio tracks. (If this system has Windows on it, go to the windows/media/ and grab Microsoft Sound.wav, if you're so inclined.) This should add more audio tracks to the track view. Finally, we're going to throw on some MP3's. This process is exactly the same as adding Wav's, just go to the directory with your MP3's and drag the files into the track view.

After doing the following, Gnometoaster should look something like this:


You could also add Wav's or MP3's by dragging the files from Gnome Midnight Commander into Gnometoaster.

By this time, you should have about 5-8 audio tracks, one for each precached audio track, as well as one for each Wav and MP3. Before we write the CD, we will check to make sure we have selected the appropriate tracks. Just drag one of the tracks to the preview button found on the very bottom right of Gnometoaster. This should start up the internal preview function. If everything sounds good, proceed to write the disc. Just click on the CD Icon in the bottom left, and hit record. A progress bar will pop up like the one below, and after a while, the CD will pop out.

There you are, you now have created an audio CD, playable on any CD player, that is composed of other CD's, Wav's and MP3's.




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