[LAU] Generic Linux keyboard

[Rob]

On Sunday 20 May 2007, Julien Claassen wrote:
>   Nop, MIDI is most certainly not the right kind of protocol
> for this purpose. 

You could actually do a lot of what he wants via SysEx, but you'd 
need control over the firmware on the keyboard in order to get 
it done.  I don't know of any MIDI controllers with open 
firmware.

I think the closest we'll get in the foreseeable future (without 
spending 4 grand on a full-blown Lionstracs workstation that 
already has a Linux PC inside it) is some kind of preset 
configurations for common MIDI controllers, templates or cheat 
sheets for those controllers, and maybe even some kind of MIDI 
middleware app that translates particular MIDI controller 
messages into instructions for controlling different Linux audio 
apps, maybe loading "presets" through LASH.  

When I have some free time I hope to set something like that up 
for my PCR-30, maybe not the last part but certainly the first 
two, and obviously I'll post whatever I do.

Rob