Re: [fluid-dev] Defining a standard directory for soundfonts Was: First Try Failure

[Stefan Kost]

On 09/06/11 12:06, David Henningsson wrote:
> On 09/05/2011 09:31 AM, Stefan Kost wrote:
>> On 09/04/11 19:40, Lane Lester wrote:
>>> Thanks for all your help, guys.
>>>
>>> It looks like QSynth is working OK, but I don't see any way to tell it
>>> what file to play!
>> btw. you should be able to play midi files in totem/rythmbox (if you
>> have gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad installed) it will use wildmidi though. I
>> should look into adding a fluidsynth midi renderer to gstreamer. The
>> main hassle for me regarding using fluidsynth in gstreamer is the
>> non-standard locations for soundfonts (as the user will need to specify
>> a soundfont to make it work).
> It sounds like we need to define some kind of standard if there isn't
> one out there already.
>
> Something like:
> A standard GM soundfont should always be in
> /usr/share/soundfonts/GM.sf2 (and that could be a symlink for distros
> who want to use configuration mechanisms).

If fluidsynth could have an api to ask for the default sf2 path and
return e.g. $datadir/soundfonts that'd be a start (especially if distros
would start putting the sf2 files there). This way e.g. QSynth could use
this as a starting point for letting users selecting a sf2 file.

Futher having a SOUNDFONTPATH would indeed be nice. As fluidsynth is the
major soundfont engine for linux, I'd say it has the authority to
propose that.
>
> Question is whether this stuff should actually be in FluidSynth or in
> its clients. If the client does not specify a soundfont on the command
> line, it might be that he/she wants to load it as a shell command.
> Maybe yet another switch --load-default-soundfont (and corresponding
> API thing)?
not sure what "load it as a shell command" means :/

Stefan
>
> // David