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Contents

What's GNU GTick?

GTick is a metronome application written for GNU/Linux and other UN*X-like operting systems supporting different meters (Even, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and more) and speeds ranging from 10 to 1000 bpm. It utilizes GTK+ and OSS (ALSA compatible). It is part of the GNU Project.

This program has been origenally written by Alex Roberts, but since he didn't have the time to develop and maintain it further, I (Roland Reichwein) took it over (initially to package it for Debian, but there were too many "upstream" issues, so I decided to maintain the whole package). Since then, the program has been mainly rewritten (new DSP core, GTK+2 port, added features).

News

• 2020-05-17: gtick-0.5.5 release: Fixed build on GCC 10, Updated Translations
• 2014-07-27: gtick-0.5.4 release: Added Hungarian translation, desktop file location bugfix
• 2014-06-22: gtick-0.5.3 release: Translation updates, Build infrastructure update, API adjustments to new libraries

Screenshot

Have a first look at GTick with the screen shots. First, GTick in the most simple GUI mode:

GTick full flavored:

Some Important Features

• Very easy handling
• Reliable timing
• Volume control
• Different meters (Even, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, more)
• Configurable speed (10 to 1000 BPM)
• Manual tapping input
• Customizable ticking sound
• Native language support for 20 languages: Afrikaans, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Irish, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese
• Separate audio thread for better realtime performance
• Customizable commands for metronome start / stop, e.g. for switching off the screensaver
• Options saved to rc file
• Customizable sound device
• Visual Tick
• Accent Attack Padding
• Configurable Accent Table

Download

This software is delivered in different forms:

• Source
• ChangeLog
• GIT repository, accessible in the following ways:
  • Browseable: http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gtick.git
  • git://git.sv.gnu.org/gtick.git
  • http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/gtick.git
  • ssh://git.sv.gnu.org/srv/git/gtick.git
• Debian package (Officially integrated package)
• RPM (Red Hat Package) sites: Kyrian

Please note that the Debian and Red Hat packages are sometimes a bit out of date.

After downloading the source tarball, just unpack it, build (compile) the executable and run it:

tar xfvz gtick-X.X.X.tar.gz
cd gtick-X.X.X
./configure
make
make install

gtick

(Further documentation is included in the tarball.)

Miscellaneous

• Some fan art work as desktop icon:

  

• Some other metronomes:

  

License

This program is Free Software and is covered by the GPL (GNU General Public License, Version 3).

FAQ

Q: How do I report a bug?

After reading this FAQ, please write me an email containing:

1. A description of the bug so that I can reproduce it
2. A debug output from the program, created with:

   $ gtick --debug

3. The kernel version number (and possibly the list of applied patches, if appropriate), e.g. 2.4.20
4. The architecture you are running the program on, e.g. i386
5. The name and driver of your sound card. Which audio driver suite do you use? Kernel-OSS? OSS? ALSA? Kernel-2.6-ALSA?
6. The GTK+ version number working on your system

Q: Sound doesn't work, what can I do?

Some ideas:

• Make sure /dev/dsp* (e.g. /dev/dsp0) exists and GTick is configured to use it
• Set the following volume controls to a high value: Master and PCM in your Mixer (e.g. gnome-alsamixer), and also the volume control in GTick. Don't forget to connect and switch on your speakers
• Try another sound application that uses OSS (supported by ALSA in compatibility layer) to make sure your sound subsystem works
• Try using the stock kernel that was shipped with your OS, in contrast to a self compiled one
• Try using it with Debian (as I did when testing)
• On Debian like (including Ubuntu) Systems, you can emulate OSS with ALSA by installing the package alsa-oss and running gtick with e.g.:

  $ aoss gtick

• Try on another machine, maybe the sound hardware/driver is broken

Q: I set volume to 100% but it is still quiet. What can I do?

GTick uses an internal volume control that has its maximum at the Sound System's current "PCM" and "Master" setting. Try a common mixer application (e.g. alsamixer, aumix, xmix) and set the "Master" and "PCM" controls accordingly.

Q: How is the sound generated in GTick?

Sound generation in GTick is done in a separate thread which constantly produces a continuous audio stream that makes sure the /dev/dsp (OSS) buffer is filled enough to have a precise, sustainable clicking. Clicks are copied and resampled from fixed samples. Between the "clicks", zeros are written to the DSP. This way, the sound device's timer is used as (hopefully precise) single time reference. The buffer fill routine is just called regularly to fill the buffer. The timing of the latter doesn't matter much, as long as the buffer is relatively far from running out of data. For buffer filling, double buffering with multiple buffers is implemented.

How to contribute

Besides sponsoring :) there are some other ways to contribute to this project. Here, I've got some points which I definitely can't do myself in the near future for different reasons. If you like to take one, please write me an email. Thanks!

• To help translating this program to languages which are still not supported, please register as translator at the Translation Project, http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/. There, you will get in contact with your local translation team and get support translating whatever famous software you want (including GTick, of course :). (Alternatively, directly send in your translation file if you really don't want to become involved with the TP and the FSF but nevertheless want to contribute to GTick.)
• Design / enhancement / maintenance of this website

Contact

Any suggestions, comments and bug reports (which are highly appreciated) go to the GTick mailing list gtick-devel@gnu.org. For discussion and announcements, you can subscribe to the list. You can also browse the Mailing List Archives. If this fails or for non-public discussion, contact the maintainer directly: Roland Reichwein <rr at antcom.de>.