Author : Theta Band Software LLC
Version 1.0.
If you write OS/2 applications and want to license the sound system used in this
program, look at the ORDER.TXT file for an order form and DSMI.TXT for a summary
of its capabilities, or visit the DSMI homepage.
Music on your web pages
The function of the DSMI plug-in is to play music module files. Those files are 32 channel digital music and are of
tremendously high quality.
You can find hundreds of music files to play at ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/songs.
The music module formats supported by the DSMI plug-in are :
| AMF |
Digital Sound & Music Interface modules |
| MOD |
Amiga modules |
| S3M |
Scream Tracker 3 modules |
| MTM |
MultiTracker modules |
| STM |
Original Scream Tracker modules |
| FAR |
Farandole composer modules |
| 669 |
Composer 669 modules |
| NST |
Noise Tracker modules |
If you don't know about music modules, read my software homepage and the DSMI homepage.
Installation instructions
This version of NPDSMI should be installed on Navigator for OS/2 General Availability.
It should not be used with the beta versions of Navigator.
You can check the plug-in page for an update anytime you want by selecting
"About Plugins" in Navigator, and then clicking on the Digital Sound & Music Interface for OS/2 plug-in.
Here is what you need to do to use the plug-in :
- Unzip this package in the PLUGINS subdirectory of your Netscape Navigator.
- Close Navigator/2 if it is opened.
- Start Navigator/2.
- Load Navigator/2 with the PLAYER.HTM page. You should hear a tune playing on your soundcard.
- Load the STOP.HTM page and bookmark it so you can later stop playback easily.
- You can also now load this page and hear music !
- You can also go to this page, which has some music files to play !!!
Direct Audio Real Time required
This plug-in requires Direct Audio Real Time - DART.
DART is included in OS/2 Warp version 4 (Merlin).
For OS/2 Warp version 3, users, you need to get Direct Audio Real Time DLL support files.
Using the plug-in
Embedding a music file
You can now put the following tag in your page :
<EMBED HIDDEN="true" TYPE="audio/x-mod" SRC="MUSIC.MOD"> </EMBED>
Put the MUSIC.MOD module file in the same directory as the HTML file, and Netscape Navigator for OS/2 users with this plug-in will be able to hear the tune !
Stopping a music file
The package comes with a page called STOP.HTM. It is highly
recommended that you bookmark this page, so that you'll be able to stop music at
anytime by simply using the bookmark menu.
Changes from the first version
Embedding music in a page on a web server
Here is good news for those who used the first beta of Navigator/2 and the first version
of NPDSMI : this limitation is gone. You can just embed your file as described above,
and it will work on any web server as long as you have the TYPE="audio/x-mod" parameter
on your EMBED tag.
- Added the STOP tag, used on the STOP.HTM page. Users no longer have to wait for a file to end playing or stop
Navigator.
- The plug-in is now able to detect if you come back on a page which already has music
playing, and will not restart the song from the beginning anymore.
- The music files are now loaded in a background thread, so as not to hurt the
ultra fast responsiveness of the Navigator/2 user interface for more than 10 milliseconds ;-).
- The plug-in checks that the file you pass it are really music files. If they aren't, they will be
ignored, and the current music file will continue to play.
- Everything was linked statically in a single plug-in DLL. You no longer need to update your LIBPATH.
Also, this makes the plug-in code shrink about half in size.
Disclaimer
There is no warranty of any kind that the DSMI plug-in will perform or not perform any task. Try it at your own risk.
Note that the DSMI plug-in for Netscape Navigator is constantly evolving. The first version of the DSMI plug-in was written in one night.