Re: No sound with Emacs 23.1.1 on Ubuntu 9.10

["B. T. Raven" <nihil@nihilo.net>]

B. T. Raven wrote:
> B. T. Raven wrote:
>> Joe Casadonte wrote:
>>> On Jan 1, 7:41 pm, "B. T. Raven" <ni...@nihilo.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you position cursor after
>>>>
>>>> (ding)
>>>>
>>>> in *scratch* and evaluate with
>>>>
>>>> C-x C-e do you hear anything?
>>> Sadly -- nothing.
>> Maybe your Ubuntu build didn't have this in term.c for some reason:
>>
>> DEFVAR_LISP ("ring-bell-function", &Vring_bell_function,
>>     doc: /* Non-nil means call this function to ring the bell.
>> The function should accept no arguments.  */);
>>   Vring_bell_function = Qnil;
>>
>> If this variable names some function then maybe the problem is with that
>> function.
>>
>> I tried to write a countdown timer in elisp once but could't get the
>> bell, C-g or char 7, to work in a loop; it would only ring once when the
>> counter went to zero. This is all it does now:
>>
>> (defun alarm-message (text)
>>   "Pop up alarm message"
>>    (ding)
>>    (message-box text))
> 
> 
> This puts ding in a 30 per minute loop that can't be broken out of:
> 
> (defun alarm-message (text)
>   "Pop up alarm message"
>    (ding)
>    (read-event)
> (while (waiting-for-user-input-p)
>    (sleep-for 2)
>    (ding)
> )
> (message-box text)
> )
> 
> I had to kill the emacs process to escape from this. What's going on here?
> 
> 
>>
>> (defun alarm ()
>>   "Set an alarm.
>> The time format is the same accepted by `run-at-time'.  For
>> example \"11:30am\"."
>>   (interactive)
>>   (let ((time (read-string "Time: "))
>>         (text "Get lead out!"))
>>      (run-at-time time nil 'alarm-message text)))
>>
>> Does any of you know how to get (ding) to work in a loop that breaks
>> when a key is pressed?
>>
>> Ed
>>
>>


Replacing alarm-message with this sort of works, in case anyone is
interested:

(defun alarm-message (text)
  "Pop up alarm message"
  (while (not (read-char nil nil 1))
   (sleep-for 2)
   (ding)
  )
 (message-box text)
)

The number of more elegant solutions is probably legion.