Subject: Re: MIDI player
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 08/10/1998 15:46:22
>But really, shouldn't this be a separate line discipline for serial
>ports or something?  MIDI can be run over any serial port that's
>capable of the right baud rate - oh, and doesn't it need to do current
>loop?  Whatever, /dev/midi seems shortsighted when on some machines
>"any" serial port can do MIDI.  (I think NeXTen are like this, for
>example, not that our NeXT port is all that developed yet.)

When people say that they're playing MIDI files, I can see that as
meaning two things:

1) Squirting bytes out of a MIDI-capable serial port to a MIDI device
2) Taking sound samples in a MIDI file and playing them out a sound
   card at the appropriate times (as specified in the MIDI file).

Now, is everyone talking about 1) or 2)?  I think doing 1) in the kernel
would be fine, but I don't think 2) should be in the kernel at all.

--Ken