MID vs MOD - WAS : Re: [linux-audio-dev] ".mid" files playing in Linux games

[Dominic Genest]

> I think perhaps a better terminology might be "ideation" and
> "realization". But again, ideation has nothing to do with a file format.

No matter which word we choose, the choice of a file format highly influences 
the level of abstraction of the idea the file expresses.

Think about a webpage. Imagine your favorite website as a single big ".GIF" 
image map instead of an HTML structure. Well it could work and probably even 
look good, but you couldn't extract some part of its text easily, you 
couldn't search it with one of your browser's commands, you couldn't enlarge 
text with automatic page reformatting without overloading the width of your 
screen, etc.

That's because the ".gif" would describe the website at a much lower level 
(the pixels), or most of the "realization" would be already done if you 
prefer. Then (what I and many other people call) the intention is lost in 
favor of the extension.

In this example, the "gif" file describes pixels as the "wav" file (or parts 
of ".mod") describes sound pressure in function of time ; while the "html" 
file describes the wanted quite abstract layout of the page as the "mid" file 
describes notes having to be played and instrument choices.

-- 
Dominic Genest
Étudiant 3e cycle
Département d'Informatique et de Génie Logiciel
Université Laval
97010111