FreeLists / openbeos-midi / [openbeos-midi] Re: activity/status?

["Michael Phipps" <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>The address for ALSA is:
>
>alsa-project.org
>
>I cannot find any evidence that we would find a major benefit by looking
>at ALSA, as(AFAIAA)it is a library for a low latency Linux sound card
>implementation, and it is LGPL.  I'm afraid the MIT liscense may start
>biting us in the ass on this one, as Linux has a lot of resources
>available, but very few in BSD or similar free liscenses.  I believe MIDI
>in Linux is covered by a /dev/midi, or something like that.  This is what
>I remember from the agonizing attempts at getting MIDI working over a year
>ago.  However, I can't possibly be conisidered an authority on this.

I would rather look at it as an example of the not really as free as they would 
have you believe
GPL biting us. :-)

>MIDI is an exceedingly simple serial protocol, which is available for all
>to observe and learn.  I don't necessarily think it is the best idea to be
>worrying about hardware drivers at this junture(just a thought).  For one
>thing, a great deal of MIDI interfaces these days are popping up in all
>sorts of places, especially USB.  You've probably noticed that I'm
>rambling like mad at this point, and that is because I'm at a loss as to
>where to begin.  Is there a resource online with which I can observe the
>MIDI api implementation in Beos?  I can provide links/documentation for
>the MIDI spec to all that may be interested.

Where to begin? I would look at the BeBook. That and the MIDI spec. 
I would start by ignoring serial ports/USB all together and writing a MIDI 
parser
for files. A second development track could use the existing (Be's) parser and 
load and 
play instrument files.