I am in the lookout of someone in the knowhow of how it would be possible to override ringtone on incoming call with a custom sound. Now before you think I'm crazy, I have a very specific use case for this: Saying out loud the caller id (default feature on symbian).

This feature has been requested and discussed in here.

It seems that the ringtone has very high priority and will override other sounds and do not yield for other sounds until over. Is it possible to get around this? I would like it so that ringtone is muted for a second or two and the name is said then. After that the ringtone is continued.

This might require deep platform information and if you know a contact from Nokia that could tell more, that would be appreciated.

ummm by far that I know off it's not yet possible with N900. Or should I say it may not possible.

EDIT: nm, didnt read your post through

Oh dear God I want that so much. It's invaluable to driving to know who calls so you know whether to ignore and call later or if it's an emergency or if it's worth getting up.

I would certainly buy/donate on that.

I'm thinking it can be worked around via a ringtone that naturally mutes/fades to lower from second 2 to second 5, allowing the speech synth to be heard. One still needs the hook for the ringing event. I saw voice synth is already available via CLI so that should be easy.

Just execute the CLI command on second 2 and remember to break it if there's answer event - you don't want voice-over-voice.

I can live with a sagging volume curve ringtone.

The problem is that ringtone overrides all other sounds if started beforehand, if started during ringtone, they are never heard. The sound level of ringtone is irrelevant.

I think this is not possible without the aid of Nokia, that's why I also asked for contacts.

Ok, how about no ringtone and the app plays itself?

Interesting idea, doesn't seem to be possible to select no ringtone at all though.

How about an extension of the silent profile?

Does it still play but at no volume or is it muted? Maybe a custom silent profile with the already-available applications could cut it, since an app is not bound forcefully to silent profile guidelines.

I believe the file /usr/share/policy/etc/current/pulse/xpolicy.conf may shed some light into the situation. Search for "ringtone" and look at the rest of the file to figure out how to get your program tagged as one that plays ringtones.

Great tip qwerty12. The file looks like the right place to try stuff. Since I am using espeak inside my app I tried this:

[stream]
exe = espeak
group = ringtone

.. but nothing seemed to change.