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MyContacts - Ring Tone Handling

How it works:

When the application starts it replaces the ring tone setting for the general profile with a symbolic link ("crochik-general") pointing to the current ring tone.

Just before the phone starts ringing the application will check  the phone number and redirect the symbolic link to the assigned ring tone only if it is from a contact in one of the groups with a ring tone. If the phone number does not match any contacts on any groups with ring tones assigned to it the application will not change the symbolic link that should be pointing already to the original/default ring tone.

Just after you hang up the call the application will redirect the symbolic link to what was the original ring tone when the application started so any calls will use it by default.

How to change the default ring tone:

In order to change the default ring tone you need to first "shutdown" the application (and widget), replace the ring tone using profile settings and then restart the application again. If you replace the ring tone while the application is running (even if it is hidden) the application will automatically stop to handle incoming calls until the next time you restart it.

File Format

Internally the "phone" can only use wav files as ring tones. Whenever you assign a different audio file to the profile the "phone" will convert the file to a wav file and store on a "cache" location. Right now MyContacts will only allow you to assign wav files ring tones because it does not implement an automatic audio file format conversion and can't control the "phone" one.


How to Convert sound files into "WAV Ring Tones" on the device

In order to convert files using this method you will need to use the x-terminal because the file manager will not give you access to the files (hidden folders). Should not be too difficult to make this into a script or a program, for that, the main challenge is to have the script wait until the conversion is done.

Make sure MyContacts is not running.
  1. Start the "Settings" application
  2. Select profiles
  3. Assign the "sound" file you want to use as ring tone to the profile by clicking on the "ring tone" button
  4. The "settings" application will convert and cache the file. After several seconds you will find a file with the same name (with ".wav" added to it) on the folder /home/user/.local/share/sounds. IMPORTANT: converting the file to wav file takes several seconds and the only indication you will have that the conversion is not complete is how busy the CPU will be and that the file will keep growing.
  5. Make sure to copy the file to some other folder (e.g. /home/user/MyDocs) because the "settings"  application will delete it as soon as you assign a new ring tone to the profile
  6. repeat the process starting on #3 to convert more files
  7. Before closing the "settings" application assign the "sound" file that should be used as the default ring tone
  8. Start MyContacts application and assign the "wav" files you just converted to the groups. IMPORTANT: MyContacts will not make a copy of the files - if you delete or move them MyContacts will not be able to use them anymore.

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