[LAU] [ANN] Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard 0.1.0

[Edward Tomasz Napierala]

On 0901T1838, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> > > On the linux side, there is jack-keyboard which has two manuals and
> > > everything
> >
> > Two and a half.  ;-)
> 
> The man page, the web site, and something else that counts as the half 
> one? ;-)

I've misread 'manuals' as 'octaves'.  I've never thought about 'two
manuals' in church organ terminology.

> Seriously, I think he talks using the church organ terminology to describe the 
> four rows of keys mapped as notes in your jack-keyboard compared to vmpk, 
> where the default (built-in) key map uses only the two lower rows, like 
> vkeybd. Also like vkeybd, in vmpk the user can customize the alphanumeric 
> layout mapping the upper rows of keys if he wish so. Some provided map 
> layouts use all key rows. Being vkeybd (and vmpk) keyboard mappings 
> configurable by the user, I find it surprising your claim that jack-keyboard 
> has a "much better keyboard mapping", when it is hard-coded in the program. 
> Flexibility is not desirable for you?

Sure it is.  But I prefer things that are simple and "just work", without
need for configuration.  At the time I wrote the docs, jack-keyboard had
much better _default_ keyboard mapping.

> On the other hand, the key event handling code in vmpk may be not very 
> time-efficient, and may be related to the observed delays. I will try to 
> measure and optimize it, although I think this problem may be neglected 
> compared to the big hardware problems of the alphanumeric keyboards that 
> prevent some key combinations to be pressed together at all. Anyway, the 
> piano keyboard emulators aren't real music instruments. Is anybody going to 
> perform a real concert with one of them? 

No.  But they are useful if all you have with you is a laptop and you
are bored and want to experiment a little.

Also, an important purpose for jack-keyboard is testing if JACK works
properly.  ;-)

[..]

-- 
If you cut off my head, what would I say?  Me and my head, or me and my body?