hexchat-alsa-notify

A HexChat addon for Linux to play notifications directly from Alsa

HexChat uses its internal engine to play sound notifications (or libcanberra), while this is usually ok for most users, some of us have more than one sound card, or a specific hardware/software setup that could create some issues, such as a complex .asound configuration or using multiple sound servers like jack with pulseaudio. With this script you can use a specific alsa hardware card or, eventually, a plug:device if set in the .asoundrc file.

Requirements

• A Linux system with working ALSA sound
• Python scripting interface plugin for HexChat
• pyalsaaudio.

Install

Download alsa_notify.py and put it in the HexChat addon directory (usually it is ~/.config/hexchat/addons/) or load it from HexChat through Window/Plugins and Scripts window. Once the plugin is loaded it selects the first available hardware device and tries to use a default file (sine_alert.wav).

Usage

There is a custom menu added in the Settings menu of HexChat, you can control basic behavior of the plugins from here. Apart from that, there's a full command interface available:

/alsanotify <command> [option]

command	action
config	Show configuration
list_cards	List available sound cards
set_card id	Set card id
test	Test sound
test_file *file*	Test "file" wave (must be a stereo wave file)*
set_file *file*	Set "file" wave*
load_file [test]	Show a file open dialog to select a file; add "test" argument to just listen to the file, otherwise it will be set if successfully opened
download_sound	Download default sound file
list_events	List available events
set_event event	Enable "event" notifications**
unset_event event	Disable "event" notifications**
about	Show informations about this script
help	Show this help

(*) file name can be an absolute or relative path ('~' is accepted).

(**) event is case insensitive.

The script automatically enables the 2 default events (more events might be added in the future) once installed, which are "Channel highlights" when an user types your nick.

If you just download the script without the default file, you can make the script to download it for you using the get_default command

Issues

Right now I don't know how to really open any audio file yet, so it's better to use a standard stereo Wave file at 44.1/48khz.

Using sox:

$ sox input.wav -r 48000 -c 2 output.wav

Using ffmpeg:

$ ffmpeg -i input.wav -ar 48000 -ac 2 output.wav