From owner-freebsd-multimedia Thu Oct 16 00:45:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id AAA12776 for multimedia-outgoing; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 00:45:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-multimedia) Received: from labinfo.iet.unipi.it (labinfo.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id AAA12744 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 00:44:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it) Received: from localhost (luigi@localhost) by labinfo.iet.unipi.it (8.6.5/8.6.5) id HAA10739; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 07:24:49 +0100 From: Luigi Rizzo Message-Id: <199710160624.HAA10739@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Subject: Re: Who is interested in /dev/midi and /dev/synth ? To: rhh@ct.picker.com (Randall Hopper) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 07:24:48 +0100 (MET) Cc: multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <19971015171047.05325@ct.picker.com> from "Randall Hopper" at Oct 15, 97 05:10:28 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Luigi Rizzo: > |> Luigi Rizzo: > |> |I am wondering if there is anyone who really needs /dev/midi and > |> |/dev/synth, and used them on the old sound driver. If you do, (Uncle > |> |Sam's finger pointed at you) speak up, telling which apps you use > |> |which do not work with the new audio driver, where I can find them, > |> |and how are you going to help in implementing these devices. ... > If the functionality is there from the old driver, why rip it out? neither the original driver nor the new one do everything we would like to. So either choice you make, it will leave some people disappointed. I am well aware of that and so I am perfectly comfortable with people using the old driver if it works for them. I would be more than happy to add missing features to the new driver, but I have only so much time and especially not enough expertise and hardware for developing and testing /dev/synth, so it will be necessary that someone steps in and helps. I will be more than glad to help on this. It is not a matter of "ripping out functionality", the new driver is a complete rewrite and we cannot simply cut&paste files from the old one without understanding what they do. I also want to point out that the new driver with support for a ton of different cards and extensive comments amounts to about 5000 lines of C code. The synth-related functionalities in guspnp10a are as following: prova# wc *c 3384 10481 90014 awe_wave.c 4877 16389 124344 gus_wave.c 679 2065 15823 midi_synth.c 1632 4532 36632 mpu401.c 1132 3531 27447 opl3.c 1769 4959 37811 sequencer.c and others. Assuming that there is some severe code bloat, still it will be a non trivial task to extract the useful stuff from these big files which in some cases come straight from the SDK of the various manufacturers. One of the goals of the new driver was to have a high-quality piece of software, documented and easy to follow even from other people than the author. Importing large files from some vendor's SDK is not the way to achieve this result. > You originally asked for those that use the synth devices with the old > sound driver to speak up and I did. Though the AWE driver and sequencer > apps, I play MIDIs, MODs, 669s, S3Ms, etc. (while I work on other things) > and the Doom Music server (on occasion) on the wavetable side of my SB32. > It sounds like I didn't give you the answer you wanted. well you missed the last sentence :) really I hoped that people like you could help in adding support for the synth since you certainly have quite some expertise and maybe even interest in these features. But of course you also might have limited time and cannot work on everything. Cheers Luigi -----------------------------+-------------------------------------- Luigi Rizzo | Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione email: luigi@iet.unipi.it | Universita' di Pisa tel: +39-50-568533 | via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy) fax: +39-50-568522 | http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ _____________________________|______________________________________