Comment 21 for bug 324700

There are two issues we present in this bug:
1) Ubuntu users need to be able to customize **alert sounds** (in any readable directory for that user).
2) A utility should be made available for users with little knowledge of the spec to create custom **sound themes**.

A few ideas on how to resolve this.

The first part of the issue (alert sounds) can be solved by allowing a user to:
a) place files in ~/.alerts (example) and having them show up in sound preferences
b) having the user be able to click "Add" in sound preferences and add a new alert

The second part (sound theme creation) is a mess and I'm not sure how to go about making it easier to use. We can't/shouldn't be able to customize all event sounds (Enable window and button sounds) within Sound Preferences. There are over 100 sound events available (see "Sound Naming Specification"). Allowing users to change them all inside Sound Preferences utility would be not be neat. However, importing a sound theme from any accessible location should be clean enough.

The issue still remains: How doe the average use create a sound theme? It could be solved by creating a utility to simplify the process of creating sound themes. I suggest a utility be created for this process. This utility would bring up a list of all 100+ possible events and then allow the user to assign sound files to each. It will then output a folder containing a index.theme file and a stereo folder with all the sounds (converted to .oga format if needed).

Spec: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/sound-theme-spec