[...] > 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. ALSA has MIDI drivers so I thought that would benefit. But no, ALSA is not LGPL, it is GPL and thus it can only be used with a GPL kernel. [...] > 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. Well, Linux has more than just /dev/midi, but for OBOS I thought the kernel driver could prove usefull, but then again it is GPL and I don't know if the OBOS kernel is too. There are probably other open source drivers for the MPU401 out there. > 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). I think its ok to start with a kernel driver, but I think a modular approach is best. So the kernel driver only provides access to the hardware, it does not need the have a standard interface. Then a user space module can be used to enable access to different kernel drivers. On top of that you can then build the high level MIDI kit. > For one > thing, a great deal of MIDI interfaces these days are popping up in all > sorts of places, especially USB. With all these different MIDI interfaces it is best to not have a standard kernel MIDI interface. > 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? The MIDI kit internals are not documented. > I can provide links/documentation for > the MIDI spec to all that may be interested. Do you have the official MIDI 1.0 specification? If yes, how does this compare to the specs one can find online? --martijn