The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Text
Preferences
There is not that much to say about the text file editor other than it exists and it is a typical text editor,
and you can create or edit text files by choosing New… or Open… from the File menu and selecting the
file type named Text.
You can use the text file editor to create sets of data to be read by the TextFileInterpreter, which can map
datasets to Sound parameters. You can also use a text file window to test out Smalltalk expressions; type
in the expression, select it, and use Ctrl+Y to evaluate the expression.
You can set some interface preferences by selecting Preferences from the Edit menu. These are decisions
about the appearance or performance of various aspects of the user interface that, once set, will be saved
in a file called Kyma Preferences or kyma.pre. Because they are saved in a file, Kyma will remember
them each time you start up the program, so you won’t have to reset them each time. §
Multi-user Systems
When more than one person is using a single Kyma system, for example in a school, or a large studio or
lab, each person can have a unique preferences file.
When you are setting up the system for multiple users, locate the Kyma Preferences or kyma.pre file
(automatically created the first time you quit Kyma). Create a folder for each Kyma user, and drag a copy
of the preferences file into each folder. Instruct the users that they should start Kyma by double-clicking
the preferences file in their own folders. From then on, any changes that individual users make in their
preferences will be saved only in their preferences file and will not alter the system for everyone else.
Appearance
You can decide whether you would like the default icon size in a parameter field to be small or large,
whether you would like to display full file path names in parameter fields, and whether you would like
to show all the digits of any floating point double-precision numbers.
Performance
Disk Recording/playback and the Graphic Interface
Icon Size
Double float digits
Full path names
To be able to stop disk playbacks the same way you stop other Sounds (Ctrl+K), you should check the
box labeled Update display during disk operations in the performance preferences.
§ If your system seems to suddenly start acting strangely, the first thing you should try is to throw away your preferences
file, and restart Kyma. The preferences file contains information about the basic state of your system, so if
that file should happen to have an error in it, it will cause problems in Kyma. Don’t worry about throwing away a
preferences file, because Kyma will generate a new one for you the next time you quit the program.
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