Re: [fluid-dev] Announce: FluidGUI Version 0.8

[Ken Ellinwood]

--- Josh Green <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> I realized after I replied to your last email that your program is
> written in Java and controls FluidSynth via the TCP server control.
> Thats pretty neat :) So that means your GUI should theoretically run on
> anything that FluidSynth can and probably even on another network or
> Internet connected machine?

Currently it requires/assumes that FluidSynth will be launched as a
sub-process
on the local machine.  Also, there is some work to do to get the FluidSynth
TCP
server supported on platforms other than Linux.  It turns out that the shell
simply reads from a file descriptor (if its not using readline()).  On Linux
this works fine since opening a socket creates a file descriptor.  On Windows
this is not the case.  I'm planning on submitting a patch for FluidSynth that
takes care of this problem.

> I could see some MIDI player commands being added, that look like:
> 
> load <midi_file_name>  - SoundFont/MIDI files auto detected
> play  - Play from the list of loaded MIDI files
> stop  - Stop playing MIDI files (might be "pause")
> 
> Some new settings:
> midi.player.loop  - Boolean value to set if play list is looped
> midi.player.bpm   - Beats per minute
> midi.player.tempo - MIDI tempo (relates to BPM, different units)
> 
> 
> Unfortunately it seems that there are some missing C API calls that
> would complete the whole picture. These would have to wait till next API
> version release.
> No way to get the list of loaded MIDI files, delete files from the list,
> or re-organize it.


I wasn't thinking of anything this complicated.  Playing MIDI works now if
you
give the MIDI file as a FluidSynth command line argument.  I was simply
planning on a "play" command that invoked this same functionality for a
single
MIDI file and possibly update the "reset" logic to also kill any currently
playing MIDI file.  In the GUI, I'd simply keep a list of the 5 most recent
played MIDI files in the user's .fluidgui file and offer these under a
"File/Recently played..." menu item.

> I also just realized that there isn't a way to get the FluidSynth
> version via the shell. This could be useful as the API changes to check
> for certain functionality.

True.  This would be very nice. 
 
Ken



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