<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
type="guide"
id="configuration">
<info>
<link type="guide" xref="index#configuration"/>
<desc><key>F12</key> brings up the options window with the Player, Display, System and Plugin sections.</desc>
</info>
<title>Settings dialog</title>
<p>There are various options for streamtuner2.
You can find the settings dialog in the edit menu as "Preferences" (last entry).
</p>
<terms>
<title>It's separated into three main areas.</title>
<item>
<title>Player</title>
<p>Lists audio formats and the audio player applications, or recording tools below.
It's a file type to application table. Double click an entry for editing.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Options</title>
<p>Influences the display of all stream/station lists, and contains some system settings.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Channel Plugins</title>
<p>Every channel tab can have specific options. These are configured here.
Also you can disable channels you don't need.</p>
</item>
</terms>
<section id="apps">
<title>Player application settings</title>
<p>MIME types are elaborate identifiers for file types; audio/mp3 for example represents MP3 files, and audio/ogg
means just OGG.</p>
<p>The text entry fields can hold the application name of an audio player. Often the application name
is just a lower case version of the program title.</p>
<p>Behind application names a placeholder can be used. On invocation such placeholders
get replaced with an URL (a http://..-Link) or filename for the selected radio stream.</p>
<p>Placeholders are introduced by a percent sign, and followed by letters. %m3u for example generates a .m3u file,
which most audio players understand. Otherwise try %pls, which might even be faster because streamtuner2 doesn't
have to download and preprocess it. Alternatively %srv instead gives a direct stream link.</p>
<p>Catch-all entries like */* or a generic audio/* entry allow to configure a default player.
</p>
<p><title>Recording</title></p>
<p>The second block of entries in the 'Apps' section specifies recording applications.
Here streamripper is preconfigured for audio streams, and youtube-dl for Youtube videos for instance.
To define a target directory, you can add commandline arguments to each. Also it's typically
helpful to leave the xterm prefix on, so you can follow the processing state. (Alternatively to
xterm there is x-terminal-emulator, or rxvt, gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal, etc.)</p>
</section>
<section id="gui">
<title>Display/GUI options</title>
<p>Most options here a self-explanatory. The options for the favicons define if station entries should
show little icons. Not all stations have one, so you might as well turn this off to conserve a little
memory.</p>
<p>The number of stations setting is not honored by all channel plugins. Often it's not possible to
load more or fewer station entries. Some plugins have own settings (in the 'Plugins' section) even.
For the major plugins this however limits how much scroll text appears in the stream lists.</p>
<p>"Retain deleted stations" keeps old entries, when you reload a category/genre. Shoutcast often
forgets stations or throws them out. If you keep this option enabled, these entries are kept in
streamtuner2. Browse down in the stations list to still see them.</p>
<p>It's possible to select a Gtk+ theme. But not all themes work with all Gtk display engines, and
not all themes work with streamtuner2. You'll have to try.</p>
<p>Remembering window states allows streamtuner2 to reconstruct which channel and category was last
selected. You can however disable this option, and instead manually save the window states/layout
in the edit menu, if you want.</p>
<p>Setting another temporary directory might be useful, if you want to keep the temporary .m3u cache
files. They are created whenever you hit play. For archival or speed-up porposes you might want to keep
them elsewhere. They don't take a lot of space.</p>
</section>
<section id="plugins">
<title>Plugin and Channel settings</title>
<p>Each channel plugin can bring its own list of configuration settings. These are collected here.</p>
<p>The heading for each plugin allows to enable or disable it. To apply changed states you need to restart
streamtuner2 however.</p>
<p>If you want to find out more about the short option descriptions (most settings are checkboxes),
please have a look into the channels directory /usr/share/streamtuner2/channels/ and corresponding
*.py files. These are readable, and sometimes contain more information.</p>
</section>
</page>