Your Choice 3/Your Choice Software Collection 3.iso/os2/pmsound/hints.txt

Text File | 1994-08-20 | 6KB | 125 lines

Common questions and answers about PMsndX.

Q.  How do I enter the registration information?
A.  To enter the registration information, pull down the
    menu from the control panel and select either the
    Welcome or About menu item.  The display will contain a
    button to bring up the registration display.  The
    information may be entered from the keyboard or from a
    file.

Q.  Where is the registration information stored?
A.  PMsndX stores all of the registration information in the
    os2.ini file.  This amounts to about 100 bytes of data.

Q.  PMsndX does not provide a volume control.  How do I adjust
    the volume of the sample playback?
A.  The MMPM portion of PMsndX has been implemented so that it
    will share the audio device with other programs.  OS/2 comes
    with a Volume Control application which can be used at the
    same time that PMsndX is active.  This is the preferred
    method of regulating the volume of the playback.  PMsndX
    has been written to avoid duplicating functions that come
    with OS/2 unless they aid in the total function of the
    editing procedure.

Q.  Why is the executable 450k?
A.  Duh.  The source for this program is about 26000 lines
    of C++.  There is about 100k of icons and graphics that
    takes up a lot of room because the icons contain
    versions for each of the different displays (e.g.
    Independent Color Form (=VGA), Independent Form - (1.2
    format), and 8514 - 16 colors).

Q.  Why is there a delay between when the SHIFT key is
    lifted and when the Merge button changes back to Paste?
A.  The merge button display changes back to Paste after
    a delay of about 1 second because the PASTE button is
    updated from the clipboard every second.  If the mouse
    is moved, it causes the display to update and check the
    clipboard and so the display will be updated quicker.

Q.  What happens when I try to play a 16 bit sample on an 8
    bit sound card?
A.  PMsndX is capable of editing and manipulating sounds
    of any number of bits, rate, and channels.  However,
    audio adapters are limited in their capabilities.
    Therefore, PMsndX will still load and manipulate samples
    that cannot be played on the audio adapter but the MMPM
    dialog will disable all of its buttons.

Q.  Why does the PMsndX icon remain hashed after the program
    has exited?
A.  Under OS/2 2.11 some programs remain hashed even though
    they have exited.  Future releases of OS/2 may correct
    this problem.

Q.  Where do the icons go when PMsndX windows are minimized?
A.  Check the "Minimized View" for the icons.  When PMsndX
    is started from a command line, OS/2 2.11 places the
    minimized icons in the "minimized view" even if the
    system settings are set to place them on the desktop.

Q.  When selecting a file type in the OPEN or SAVE dialog
    box, why do I have to reselect the "EA type" to get it
    to recognize the change?
A.  PMsndX uses the FILEDLG functions that are standard with
    OS/2.  Although the documentation indicates that the EA
    Type entry field can operate for a file mask or an EA
    selector, I could not get it to perform in this way.  To
    circumvent the problem I augmented the display with a
    separate box for the mask but it does not fully interact
    with the FILEDLG functions.  As a result, a standard
    field must be selected for it to pick up the new mask.
    (A future release will have this fixed.)

Q.  Can compressed VOC files be loaded?
A.  Unfortunately, I cannot find documentation on the
    compressed VOC formats and they are not implemented in
    PMsndX.  A future release may have this corrected.

Q.  I have a file created by sox10.  Why can't PMsndX load the
    file?
A.  SOX for DOS and OS/2 were ported from the Unix environment.
    Under DOS and OS/2, as a file is read or written, the data
    is filtered so that single linefeeds are replaced by carriage
    return-line feed sequences.  Under Unix, this does not occur.
    As a result, a SOX file cannot be loaded because it has extra
    characters in the header and body of the data.  SOX needs to
    be recompiled with the file IO system set for binary so that
    it does not try to filter the data.

Q.  Why is the RECORD button never enabled on MMPM?
A.  The RECORD function of PMsndX has not been implemented at
    this time.  A future release may have this feature but
    PMsndX is currently designed to be an editor and not a
    recorder.

Q.  What does the REWIND button do on the MMPM dialog?
A.  The REWIND button has been added for completeness.  When
    playback ends or when the stop button is pressed, PMsndX
    automatically rewinds.

Q.  I want to load a large sample.  How do I minimize the
    memory requirements?
A.  When a file is loaded it is stored as 16 bit samples
    regardless of the actual sample size.  This takes up
    roughly twice the memory as would be required for 8 bit
    samples.  When the MMPM dialog is open a second copy of
    the data is required for the audio adapter.  This copy
    is exactly the size of the data that would be written to
    disk.  If it is an 8 bit sample file, then the samples
    in the buffer are 8 bits.  If it is a 16 bit file, then
    the buffer contains 16 bit samples.  During an editing
    operation (i.e. cut, paste, or anything in the toolbox)
    the data is double buffered to allow the operation to be
    aborted.  Finally, when the UNDO capability is enabled
    from the settings dialog, a copy of the last sample will
    be maintained for the UNDO.

    With all that said, to minimize the memory requirements,
    close the MMPM dialog and disable the UNDO feature.
    With these settings, PMsndX will require four times the
    sample file size at most when 8 bit samples are loaded.
    16 bit samples will double at most during an operation.