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Date:      Mon, 20 Oct 1997 17:09:21 -0400
From:      Randall Hopper <rhh@ct.picker.com>
To:        Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Cc:        multimedia@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Who is interested in /dev/midi and /dev/synth ?
Message-ID:  <19971020170921.04433@ct.picker.com>
In-Reply-To: <199710170426.FAA13110@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>; from Luigi Rizzo on Fri, Oct 17, 1997 at 05:26:21AM %2B0100
References:  <19971016194418.46875@ct.picker.com> <199710170426.FAA13110@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>

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Luigi Rizzo:
 |> However, if across the group we're lacking T T or E for a rewrite, unless
 |> you know of some prohibitive bugs in the existing synth code, it might be a
 |> good idea to lean toward working it so that the synth system's existing
 |> external APIs can be "plugged in" so-to-speak across a DMZ (your clean code
 |
 |the external API is the last think I want to change -- as in the case
 |of the sound driver, i implemented most of the voxware interface first,
 |and then tried to define a new one to cover the missing
 |functionlaities. But the problem I think is that even pluggin in a
 |module without understanding what it does it's a hard task. Plus...

Sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "external".  What I meant was the
APIs between the sound driver "shell" and each of the individual sequencer
drivers (like probe, attach, ioctl, etc.).  I was thinking of these
sequencer APIs as external to a particular sequencer driver (in terms of
plugging into the sound driver shell), but of course they're still internal
to the sound driver as a whole.  Sorry about that.

 |... the real thing I am missing is not how to code the driver, for that
 |I can borrow from the existing one. The real problem is what the synth
 |is expecting to receive in terms of communication with the system. I
 |guess it needs, for each note, a set of parameters identifying the note
 |to play, and perhaps some timing reference to relate it to other notes.
 |Also what kind of feedback is the driver supposed to give back to the
 |application --- things like "i am about to finish with this note please
 |send me more..." etc. Once I understand this, i guess i can be really
 |productive. And for that it is more important to have a high level
 |understanding of what the synth should do, rather than low level driver
 |programming. It is the former experience i am severely lacking an
 |looking for help. if you know about that, or know somebody who can
 |help, please let me know.
 |
 |>From these discussions I am slowly figuring out what should the
 |interface be, but more is needed...

I've not done any sequencer programming myself, but the two references I'm
aware of are are:

    1) Chapter 4 (pp 32-44) from Hannu's snd-sdk-doc-0.1.ps, and
    2) http://www.4front-tech.com/pguide/midi.html at 4-Front.

The latter is a pretty anemic write-up.  The former is much more
interesting.  Let me know if you don't have a copy of this
snd-sdk-doc-0.1.ps file and I'll be glad to get one in the mail to you.

Thanks,

Randall



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