[xmonad] Update volume without polling?

[Ferenc Wagner]

Omari Norman <omari at smileystation.com> writes:

> I like to see my sound volume in my xmobar. Usually I change the volume
> using keyboard mappings that I defined in my xmonad.hs. [...]
>
> This works fine if I change the volume using the xmonad keyboard
> binding, but not if I change the volume another way, such as with
> alsamixer. Then the volume shown in my status bar is inaccurate. I could
> of course simply set up xmobar to periodically read the volume with
> amixer at, say, every .1 second or 1 second or whatever. 
>
> What I'm wondering is if there is any way to update the volume without
> periodically firing up amixer. I haven't even been able to figure out if
> the current alsa volume is available anywhere in the /proc or /sys
> directories. There must be some way to do this--for example, if I run
> alsamixer and change the volume from outside alsamixer, the bars in
> alsamixer instantly update--but could this easily be done with a shell
> script too?

Alsamixer reads /dev/snd/controlC0 (for the first card).  It speaks a
binary protocol, definitely not for shell scripts.  And the Haskell
binding for ALSA lacks the control interface, AFAICS.  But you can write
a very simple C program to continuously print the volume changes on a
given card, and use that from your script.  Or even better, extend the
Haskell ALSA library to provide the needed functionality, and add it to
xmobar. :)
-- 
Regards,
Feri.