[gmpi] Re: MIDI: Common event coding

> My biggest fear is that if we provide MIDI inputs,
> then synths will use that and ignore GMPI.

I think you may be right, but I don't think there is anyway to
change that, really.

Despite the limitations of MIDI some of you have raised, I am
sure that there are more synth plugins using MIDI than not.
If you make a host that doesn't support direct MIDI<-->Plugin
communication, this is going to be a significant issue for you.
You'll need to add that somehow, either by a translation layer
app or by recoding your apps to use MIDI. The good news is that
MIDI has been around for 21 years and you all know it rather
well. There are also lots of good resources for learning it,
coding it, etc. So the work won't be that hard, and once you've
done it you can work with all of those MIDI apps.

On the other hand, we could abandon MIDI for plugin control and
try and force the plugin developers to develop their own translation
layers or else recode their apps. If they aren't interested in doing
anything beyond MIDI control, the translation layer makes the most
sense, but when you consider that there are only a few hosts and
dozens of plugins, it makes a lot more sense for the hosts to do
the wrappers, and I suspect developers just won't do it. In any case,
they would have a substantial learning curve compared with what
there was for MIDI, since it isn't clear where the documentation
and resources and experience and all that is going to come from.
As a result, I think most of them will balk at the idea. Meaning
even if you tried to force them to change, they will just ignore
GMPI... at least until there are substantial resources available.
The result is that hosts will probably have to figure out how to
support the MIDI apps in both scenarios.

Since the result is the same in either case, it seems to me that
leaving MIDI "in" is actually the better choice... it represents
the least amount of work for the most people.

- Tom White

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