This sounds like a great excuse to use X::OSD. You could consider a fullscreen visualisation and then OSD the lyrics on top for an insanely funky display.

TK may look scary initially, but it's not. Plus, because there is more than one way to do it, you can use one of the many other windowing systems available.

Or for a bit more geek l33t, why not try drawing big letters directly to the screen. That might be easier with a bit of C on the side.

Sort of off topic, unless Perl works on iPods: what I would like is karaoke lyrics on my iPod! I have suggested it on Apple's iPod feedback form, but I haven't heard anything about it yet.

How can you feel when you're made of steel? I am made of steel. I am the Robot Tourist.
Robot Tourist, by Ten Benson

Taken pretty much from the MIDI:Event documentation:

use MIDI;  # which "use"s MIDI::Event;
my @lyrics;
MIDI::Opus->new( {
     "from_file" => $ARGV[0],
     "exclusive_event_callback" => sub{push @lyrics,  $_[2],$_[1]\n"},
     "include" => \@MIDI::Event::Text_events
   } );
[download]

so now @lyrics contains elements looking like this:


"Happy,300"
"Birthday,400"
"To,80"
"You,500"
[download]

I think the numbers represent the length of time to wait before adding the next bit of text, though I'm not sure what the units are - presumably not absolute times, because the file may get played at different tempos, so maybe they're "midi ticks" or similar.

I've noticed that when playing a karaoke file in Timidity from the command line, it actually prints the lyric events (presumably to STDOUT) so another idea might be to just capture this and print it, letting Timitidy take care of the syncronisation.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

mj

I usually use the "drvmidi" utlity to play midis and karaoke. It is an old sound blaster awedrv package. It plays kar files pretty good. I tried to capture the output of it, but there is some problem because the apps output actually goes to the soundcard so it is full of binary data. It would be neat if the lyrics were printed to stderr to avoid that complication. I'll try timidity and the MIDI::Event code above and post my results( whether success or not :-) )

As a last resort, I have been able to run drvmidi in a window in a tk canvas, and I'm sure timidity would work too. So this isn't much better than the command line, but it could be made better by using bigger fonts in the xterm and going full screen and changing the solid color to a photo.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Tk;

my $mw = MainWindow->new();

my $canv = $mw->Canvas(-bg => 'lightsteelblue',
     -relief => 'sunken',
     -width => 550,
     -height => 350)->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');

my $xtermWidth = 400;
my $xtermHeight = 300;

## this Frame is needed for including the xterm in Tk::Canvas 
my $xtermContainer = $canv->Frame(-container => 1);
my $xtid = $xtermContainer->id();
# converting the id from HEX to decimal as xterm requires a decimal Id
+ 
my ($xtId) = sprintf hex $xtid;

my $dcontitem = $canv->createWindow(275,175,
   -window => $xtermContainer,
   -width => $xtermWidth+100,
   -height => $xtermHeight,
   -state => 'normal');

my $label = $canv->createText( 275,10,
       -text => "Hide xterm",
       );

$canv->Tk::bind("<Button-1>", \&hideShow);

my $width = $xtermWidth;
my $height = $xtermHeight;

$mw->Button(-text => "Exit", -command => [sub{Tk::exit}] )->pack(  );

my $tl; #used to mask xterm 
system("xterm -into $xtId -e timidity z.kar &");


MainLoop();

sub hideShow {
    if ($canv->itemcget($label, -text) =~ /Hide/) {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'white',
                    -text => "Show xterm");

             $tl = $mw->Toplevel(-use=>$xtId );
           } else {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'black',
                    -text => "Hide xterm");
             $tl->withdraw;
        }
}
[download]

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh

"If you need alpha-transparency, color gradient, rotating or zooming images and graphics, structuring your graphic Canvas application in hierarchical groups, using affine transformations, displaying multicontour surfaces, complex clipping, or designing a performant radar display, then TkZinc is the widget you need, while being very similar to the Canvas."

Hope this helps, tell us how it goes!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Tk;
use Tk::PNG;

#works for a 1024x768 display 
my $kar = shift || 'z.kar';

my $mw = MainWindow->new();
my $xscr = $mw->screenwidth;
my $yscr = $mw->screenheight;

$mw->geometry($xscr.'x'.$yscr.'+'.'20'.'+'.'20' );

$mw->fontCreate('big',
   -family=>'courier',
    -weight=>'bold',
    -size=>int(-18*18/14));

my $canv = $mw->Canvas(-bg => 'lightsteelblue',
     -relief => 'sunken',
     -width => $xscr - 100,
     -height =>$yscr - 100,
      )->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');

my $bunny = $mw->Photo(-data =>
'iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAB4AAAAjEAIAAABcJvHFAAAACXBIWXMAAAsSAAALEgHS3
+X78AAAD 
F0lEQVR42u1YL+yqUBj1vfcLbhY3C44is8BIREYSG9FoNBqNkok2aFhp2BhJDWyadCZN/i
+lOGxan 
jRdOuRsPxl/f+23vJKfX7x6+73znu5dK5RviV9QPDMMwDIPP7/f7/X6XTWU0Go1Go06n0+
+l0PM/z 
PC91CNu2bduWZVmW5bLpjsfj8XgcBEEQBJPJZDKZZAw0n8/n8zkCGYZhGIYgCIIgFEt3OB
+wOh8OA 
gKZpmqZlDDedTqfTKRnO933f95GVer1er9fz0BVFURRFxCR3QfyMQfv9fr/fDyLgOI7jON
+mo419k 
JUkMBoPBYJCRNBrxdrvdbrco6qvVarVaIWdFpQO/5tIcFBbE4nQ6nU6nJIpHjlGlEklTFE
+VRFDIa 
T32/3+/3+3jqHMdxHBcfB2sK6HFFURRFeb1er9crfksoNUrr0GvUfxGfnA+FmX+QALDItG
+LDA6O2 
pQyCJFkPqxMDK2p9LodOAhQaLRjfoKRGo2wObl3G8PoDsA0Gb5Q5oonjfSNKTh96AOh+u9
+1ut1uS 
FuZrONPJ7bJ06tA9TDDsD6QkCnDltEDRkV1Q9AnENyuk8hcyChkkcZKo5uv1er1er3S6cA
+PkFXSx 
MQodPrXFg2zTEsVANhO2JNdEmVo80ub7K/lSDHPyLkNaXrVarVar2W46LMuyLFsKaZ7neZ
+4nvwFR 
NGKeGjYajUajkXz9z+RLn8/n8/ms/ANIQXq5XC6Xy/v9fr/fvw3p9Xq9Xq9VVVVV9fF4PB
+6Pokhc 
r9fr9Vr6s6Lf4dNpbS6/exQA3BHDt/fkPl3wwT85wlcEcrCHZyHO1tmOSl95iGLcQN80Td
+M0jTa1 
LMuyLF3XdV03TdM0zWaz2Ww2Xdd1XRenDlDHgTbtvj/ykMZpDm/6LpfL5XLBmGi32+12G6
+Th5RAA 
Pne73W63iwfGYFosFovF4kOZrtVqtVoN16TD4XA4HPAAKDp5yZUkSZIk1GGz2Ww2m91ut9
+vt0Mof 
lcfxeDwej7PZbDaboRFbrVar1SJfIsLdYZfn8/l8Pue3y1zyiH9VAMFElb5Yp/+PcvAbH/
+25ox5S 
PYYAAAAASUVORK5CYII=');


for my $x (1..15){
    $canv->createImage(30, 30 + $x * 40,
                            -image=> $bunny,
                            );
    $canv->createImage(930, 30 + $x * 40,
                            -image=> $bunny,
                            );
}

my $xtermWidth = 600;
my $xtermHeight = 500;

## this Frame is needed for including the xterm in Tk::Canvas 
my $xtermContainer = $canv->Frame(-container => 1);
my $xtid = $xtermContainer->id();
# converting the id from HEX to decimal as xterm requires a decimal Id
+ 
my ($xtId) = sprintf hex $xtid;

my $dcontitem = $canv->createWindow(475,275,
   -window => $xtermContainer,
   -width => $xtermWidth+100,
   -height => $xtermHeight,
   -state => 'normal');

my $label = $canv->createText( 475,10,
       -text => "Click Background To Hide Lyrics",
       -font => 'big',
       );

$canv->Tk::bind("<Button-1>", \&hideShow);

my $width = $xtermWidth;
my $height = $xtermHeight;

my $bframe = $mw->Frame(-bg=>'black')->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'x'
+);

$bframe->Button(-text => "Exit",
                -bg => 'lightsteelblue',
                -command => [sub{Tk::exit}] )->pack(-side=>'right', -p
+adx=>20 );
my $startbut;
$startbut = $bframe->Button(-text => "Start",
                -bg => 'hotpink',
                -command => sub{
     $startbut->configure(-state =>'disabled');
     system("xterm -fn 10x20 -bg 'black' -fg 'hotpink' -into $xtId -e 
+timidity $kar &");
                  } )->pack(-side=>'left', -padx=>20);

my $tl; #used to mask xterm 

MainLoop();
sub hideShow {
    if ($canv->itemcget($label, -text) =~ /Hide/) {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'white',
                    -text => "Click Background to Show Lyrics");

             $tl = $mw->Toplevel(-use=>$xtId );
           } else {
             $canv->itemconfigure($label,
                    -fill => 'black',
                    -text => "Click Background to Hide Lyrics");
             $tl->withdraw;
        }
}
[download]

I would add some primary colors to every sillable of the lyrics and its background.

I don't like to be a spoiler, but searching for some .kar files I stumbled with a new (+free) JAVA multiplatform option that plays midi, mp3, etc. Before depending completely on your brand new application, you might try installing this java alternative that as it looks, it comes very complete: MIDI JAVA player . It says that it needs the new JAVA JDK 5 (not the JRE) and ANT 1.5 installed. Some Mb consuming, but I guess that it should work fine since the JAVA Midi API was excellent. (besides the Mb consuming I am planning to try it soon, because it is a very promising alternative for LINUX where the system is not able to deal with my Windows midi card).

Sorry for not promoting perl this time.

.{\('v')/}   C H E E R   U P !
 _`(___)' ___a_l_b_e_r_t_o_________