couth -- a set of plugins for the awesome window manager

This is a set of plugins that I wrote for awesome.

plugins

couth.alsa:

allows you to get/set the volumes for all your alsa controls (e.g., Master volume, Headphone volume, PCM volume, etc.). When you view or change the volume, an indicator can be displayed with awesome's naughty library. The indicator is a basic bar/ascii indicator that looks something like like this:

Master   : [ ] [|||||||||||||||     ]
Headphone: [ ] [||||||||||||||      ]
PCM      :     [||||||||||||||||||||]
Front    : [ ] [|||||||||||||||||   ]

couth.mpc:

This is similar to the couth.alsa library, but it allows you to get/set the volume of an mpd server (either localhost or a remote mpd server). Here is an example of the output:

localhost volume: [||||||||||||||||||| ]

The cool thing about couth.mpc is that you can map the volume +/- keys on a laptop to control the volume on, e.g., your media server. I map a combination of [meta, shift, XF86AudioRaiseVolume]/[meta, shift, XF86AudioLowerVolume] on my laptop to raise/lower the volume on the mini-itx server plugged into my living room stereo.

Installation

• Download the couth source tree (with git, from a tarball, or however else you manage to get it) to some directory on your machine.

• Run make install to create symlinks from $HOME/.config/awesome/couth to lib directory where you installed the actual files ($PWD/lib).

• Configure your rc.lua to add:

  -- you MUST require this to use ANY couth modules:
  couth = require('couth')
  
  -- These are optional. Only require the ones that you want to use.
  require('couth.alsa')
  require('couth.mpc')
  

• Update your rc.lua to add a couth.CONFIG section to customize couth, and then add key bindings to couth functions.

rc.lua configuration

I have this in my rc.lua to specify the alsa controls to use with the couth.alsa plugin:

couth.CONFIG.ALSA_CONTROLS = {
     'Master',
     'Headphone',
     'PCM',
     'Front'
}

Search for couth.CONFIG in lib/couth.lua to see all the available configuration options.

couth.alsa key binding examples

Here is an example of using your keyboard volume +/- buttons to increase/decrease your Master alsa volume. This also binds the mute key on your keyboard to toggle the mute/unmute status of your Master volume.:

awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioLowerVolume",   function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Master','3dB-')) end),
awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioRaiseVolume",   function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Master','3dB+')) end),
awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioMute",          function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Master','toggle')) end),

I bind control + volume keys to adjust my Headphone volume:

awful.key({ "Control" }, "XF86AudioLowerVolume",    function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Headphone','3dB-')) end),
awful.key({ "Control" }, "XF86AudioRaiseVolume",    function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Headphone','3dB+')) end),
awful.key({ "Control" }, "XF86AudioMute",           function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:setVolume('Headphone','toggle')) end),

See current volume levels (but do not change any of them):

awful.key({ modkey }, "v",                       function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.alsa:getVolume() ) end),

couth.mpc key binding examples

This example binds modkey + shift + volume keys to increase/decrease or view the volume on the mpd server running on a host named "pizza":

awful.key({ modkey, "Shift" }, "XF86AudioLowerVolume",    function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.mpc:setVolume('pizza','-5')) end),
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift" }, "XF86AudioRaiseVolume",    function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.mpc:setVolume('pizza','+5')) end),
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift" }, "v",                       function () couth.notifier:notify( couth.mpc:getVolume('pizza') ) end)