These parameters affect the way Giocoso looks or, in some case, behaves. If you need to alter the colour of the program display, change the size of the album art that is displayed whenever a new composition is played, or turn on or off the ability to scrobble plays to Last.fm, these parameters are where you'll turn to. Accordingly, you'll probably use these parameters quite frequently (or store commonly-required values for them in the Giocoso persistent configuration file). Many of these parameters will use default values if the parameter is not supplied at all or if an invalid parameter value is supplied. The defaults in such cases are shown in the third column below.
| Runtime Parameter | Description | Defaults |
|---|---|---|
| --autocolour | Sets the background colour of the caption panel displayed underneath album art to one of the eight colours associated with each property group on the Monopoly® board game, in turn. On Mondays, you get brown+light text; Tuesdays are light blue+dark text; Wednesdays, purple and light text; and so on. The result is that caption panel colours are forever changing, without having to spell out specific names each time. Note that with 8 presets and only 7 days of the week, the dark blue colour of the last Monopoly® property group rarely gets used: the --autocolour option ensures it is used on the 1st day of the month, regardless of what day of week that happens to be. The parameter can be spelled with US or UK spelling of 'colour', as you prefer. Takes no value argument. | |
| --smartcolour | Performs a colour histogram frequency analysis of the album art associated with a recording and deduces an appropriate colour combo with which to display the caption underneath the album art. | |
| --displaycolour=xxxx | Sets the text colour of the Giocoso program display. Valid argument values are dark, light, neutral and classic (case is irrelevant). The exact effect of each value will depend on the session profile being used in the terminal at the time Giocoso is run. A setting of 'dark' when the terminal profile is already set to a dark theme might well result in total invisibility of the program text display, for example. Broadly speaking, light makes all text output uniformly white; dark makes all text output uniformly black; neutral sets all text output to yellow; and classic sets text output to various colours, depending on function (i.e., warnings and error messages are in red; user supplied settings are in blue; most program display labels are in yellow and so on). Theparameter can be spelled with US or UK spelling of 'colour', as you prefer. | newclassic |
| --artsize=xxxx | Makes Giocoso display (or not) album art when a new piece of music begins playing. To display album art, the parameter values of small, medium and large make the album art display at 300x300 pixels, 450x450 pixels or 900x900 pixels respectively. To prevent the display of album art altogether, the parameter value of none can be supplied. | medium (450x450) |
| --scrobble | Initiates the transmission of play data to the Last.fm listening statistics collection website. Requires that the permission to scrobble has already been obtained by previously running Giocoso with the --scrobble-config parameter and working through that configuration process (see Scrobbling for more details). If not present when Giocoso is launched, then no scobbling takes place, even if the scrobbling configuration process has been worked through. Takes no value argument. | |
| --device=xxxx | Giocoso on Linux outputs to an ALSA audio device whose hardware ID is the parameter's value. If not provided, the parameter defaults to a value of 'default'. The parameter therefore allows you to direct music output to a specific hardware device -such as a high-end DAC (digital to analogue converter). One can usually determine which sound devices are available on a Linux system by running the command: cat /proc/asound/cards and this will identify a hardware number which, when prefixed with plughw: gives you the specific audio device identifier. Hence, you might run Giocoso with the command: giocoso --device=plughw:2 Note that the parameter has no effect (and is therefore ignored) on Mac and Windows systems. If you specify this parameter on Linux, it is up to you to get it right: set it to the wrong hardware ID and you are likely to hear nothing playing at all. | default |
| --accents | Forces the use of the --no-utf8-convert metaflac switch when Giocoso uses the metaflac program to read the metadata tags embedded in a FLAC file. In turn, that parameter stops metaflac from converting 'accented characters' to non-accented English language "equivalents". For example, metaflac might convert ç to plain c or Ě to E. This usually happens only when your operating system's locale is not correctly set to UTF-8, so by default it's usually not required. If you find Giocoso is displaying what you know to be accented characters as plain English equivalents, however, then adding this parameter to your Giocoso invocation command will fix the matter. Takes no value argument. | |
| --withdock | Many operating systems these days use a 'dock' or panel at the bottom of the screen in which to display program launch icons. The presence of a dock taking up maybe 30+ pixels at the bottom of the screen can spoil Giocoso's attempt to display a caption underneath album art associated with whatever music is playing: the caption text is often lost 'behind' the dock. With this parameter present as part of the command that launches Giocoso, however, album art is positioned 42 pixels higher than normal. That is usually sufficient to put the Giocoso caption above the dock, making it visible once more. Not needed if your dock is set to auto-hide, for example, or if you don't use a dock at all. Takes no value argument. | |
| --forcepulse | By default, when running on Linux, Giocoso outputs to ALSA audio devices (because ALSA interferes with the digital data stream rather less than other Linux sound systems). If your distro (like many) has PulseAudio installed, however, then adding this parameter to the command you use to launch Giocoso forces the use of the PulseAudio sound system instead. Has no effect when Giocoso is being run on Windows or Mac systems. Takes no value argument. | |
| --autostop | Autostop is a message that a new Giocoso session can send to another that is playing a sequence of music selections. It tells the playing session to cease further playing once the currently-playing recording has finished. It does not interrupt the currently-playing recording, and when it completes naturally it will be recorded in the Giocoso database as a successful 'play' as it would normally. The Autostop message merely prevents the playing session from continuing with additional plays. | |
| --skip | Skip is another message that one Giocoso session can send to another. It instructs the playing session to immediately terminate the playback of what is currently playing. The 'play' is therefore not considered complete and is therefore not recorded in the Giocoso database (or scrobbled, if that was originally requested). If --selections has allowed the playing session to play multiple recordings in sequence, then the Skip message tells it to not only stop playing the current recording but also to move on to the next randomly-chosen recording. If you run out of selections, then Giocoso responds to the Skip message by simply terminating all further playback activities. | |
| --artwork | A message sent from a second Giocoso session that instructs the primary, playing session to re-display the album art associated with the currently-playing recording. If you have accidentally closed the album art window, for example, this parameter lets you re-open it. | |
| --resume | If you have terminated play of a particular recording by pressing Ctrl+C (and definitely not by clicking the 'X' close button in the play window's title bar), the same recording can be resumed from the precise moment it left off by re-launching Giocoso with the --resume runtime parameter. The resumed recording will then be played to the end, after which all further playback of any other recordings will stop. To play anything else, you'll need to launch Giocoso once more with more 'normal' runtime parameter. A resumed recording can be Ctrl+C & Resumed as many times as you like, provided only that Giocoso is not used to play anything else during the time when the first recording is not playing. Playing a new recording altogether wipes Giocoso's 'memory' of what the original recording was or where playback had got to for it. If a resumed recording is allowed to play through to completion, it will scrobble and be recorded in the database, once, as it would have been if playback had not been interrupted at all. | New feature in Version 2.01 only. |
| --repeat | A message sent from a second Giocoso session that instructs the primary, playing session to re-play the currently-playing recording, from the beginning, once the current play has reached its natural end. Only a single repeat takes place, though once the piece is playing a second time, you can issue another --repeat request to make it play a third time (and so on, without limit). Like autostop, the repeat message is revokable: if you issue a second repeat message before the initial repeat request has been actioned, it will revoke the initial request, and no repeat at all will take place. | New feature in Version 2.01 only. |
| --menu | Invokes the menu front-end for Giocoso, which gives easy, numbered-option access to most of Giocoso's features, without needing to resort to launching new Giocoso sessions with lots of double-hyphen runtime parameters. Music played via the menu front-end will automatically be displayed in the minimal playback window. An experimental feature introduced in version 2.01, but likely to become the main mode of running Giocoso in future releases (though the "bare metal" runtime parameter way of interacting with Giocoso will never disappear). | New feature in Version 2.01 only. |
| --minimal | Launches Giocoso with a 'play window' that is about half the size of the 'normal' (and default) play window. It accordingly displays much less information than the default play window does, but still indicates the piece playing, its performers, when it will conclude and so on. The minimal interface is the only one used when Giocoso is run with the --menu interface, but can be invoked, optionally, for any Giocoso session even if using the non-menu interface. | New feature in Version 2.01 only. |
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