On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 11:13:10PM +0100, Julien
Claassen wrote:
Why can't those people who discussed it
here (Dave R., Fons and probably
more - simply sit down and try to take as much as possible from the API - as
it is - and try to work this new concept around it.
Well, the two you mention have a long history of not having radically
different views... :-)
Seriously, there are three things that I profoundly dislike in MIDI.
1. The limited precision of almost all values, 7 bits or 14 with a
kludge (but even this kludge is not available in any standard
way for e.g. individual note frequencies).
2. Note events are identified by their frequency.
3. The only thing that can actually refer back to a note on event
is it's corresponding 'note off' message. It's not possible to
send a controller value that refers to a previous note-on event.
The worst result of all this, and what really drives me nuts is that
the same limits get built-in, carved in stone, into each and every
piece of sequencing software. They all perpetuate what is in fact
a form of cultural poverty "there's not quarter tones in pop music,
so they don't exist" while technically there is no more reason to
do so.
Midi-over-jack has missed the chance to fix 1) which would have
been relatively easy. And even 2) and 3) are not so difficult to
get rid of.
If someone comes up with a decent 'event protocol' I'm volunteer to
implement it in jack, alongside the current jack-midi API (as an
experimental feature). From an implementations perspective it's a
no-brainer.
But can someone please tell me what to implement. And not in a vague
way. IMHO that's the real issue, and the 3 points you now mention are
only the first steps along that path. Please don't stop there. Take the
time to write a funded proposal that can be discussed, and then implemented.