Well there are a few trade-offs...

Way back in '97, we tossed around a few design issues related to MIDI, and it was decided that the "base" Squeak would have the serial-port version, and that serious MIDI users would use separate primitives.

It would be good to support native APIs such as QuickTime Musical Instruments or the Windoze equivalents, and at the same time to allow interoperability with other MIDI applications (e.g., via OMS or FreeMIDI).

It's a pity that MIDI on the Macintosh is (still) such a mess. For "low end" users, it's nice not to require any additional OS drivers such as OMS, but any users with MIDI hardware and other applications already need to have the extensions. It's just not clear what Squeak should do...

For Siren, I've opted for the "high road" in that I assume OMS. The Siren plug-in is really quite trivial (7 functions), so that it should be really easy to port it to other platforms or MIDI drivers. (...any takers???)

stp


"Stephan B. Wessels" wrote:
> 
> That's a great idea.  I'm a fan of OMS from way back using Opcode's Vision
> sequencer on a Macintosh.
> 
> BUT.  Don't we still have to get the USB problem resolved for places where OMS is
> not currently supported?  I do not know but I am wondering if OMS is supported on
> the dialects that Squeak runs on (Unix)?  So I want both ways.
> 
>   - Steve

-- 
stp

Stephen Travis Pope  --  http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp
stp at expertcity.com   --  stp9 at cornell.edu