[LAD] send midi message

Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas pedro.lopez.cabanillas at gmail.com
Sun Jan 8 11:14:23 UTC 2012


On Saturday 07 January 2012, Dan Muresan wrote:
> > The decision about using one MIDI API or another, one GUI framework or
> > another, one programming language or another, in my case depends only on 
what
> > I find the best suitable tools for a task. I can't care less about the 
latest
> > fashion, or the most popular thing, because in that case I would not be
> 
> If you're writing for yourself only, no one can argue with that; but I
> was talking about public-facing apps, in which case standardizing on a
> single MIDI protocol helps users (and the ecosystem in general).

Well, I publish some of my programs with free software licenses, so they may 
be used by anyone interested. But yes, I write for myself in the first place. 
At least I don't work for you.

You are wrong about another thing: the MIDI protocol is the standard to 
follow, as it is defined by www.midi.org . ALSA implemented this standard long 
time ago, like other frameworks did before. Linux already had MIDI APIs 
following the standard long before Jack MIDI arrived bringing more 
fragmentation to the (already weak) Linux ecosystem.

> I've always thought that Jack MIDI is easier to program and provides
> better jitter guarantees, but you may see things differently.

It is designed to subordinate MIDI messages to digital audio in real time. For 
these use cases it may fit well. Pretending that it fulfills the needs of any 
other use case where MIDI may be involved is only hype and propaganda.
 
> > writing Linux applications. You know: Linux usage is absolutely marginal, 
also
> > among musicians and audio professionals. I find Jack MIDI unsuitable for 
my
> > use cases, so I usually don't use it.
> 
> It would be interesting to know which use cases you are encountering?

Except one program (VMPK) that uses RtMIDI so it supports Jack MIDI, all my 
other programs use ALSA sequencer for features that Jack MIDI don't provide 
any facility. Of course, I may implement anything needed from scratch, but I 
refuse to do so. I prefer to invest my time in other more productive tasks.

Regards,
Pedro



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