Re: MIDI Bank Select proposal (was Re: [fluid-dev] Re: Son of ticket#65)

[Jim Henry]

Again I am just making an observation regarding something I don't do so 
I could be completely off base. Is one of the uses of FluidSynth 
intended to be a MIDI file player that allows the use of sound fonts? If 
so, I think some of those who want to use it that way are likely to have 
little understanding of MIDI and no ability to alter the MIDI files or 
even know what is in them. They'll just want to load a sound font and 
the MIDI file and hear what they expect to hear. FS probably can't do 
that 100% but it needs to do the right thing most of the time or else it 
is going to get a "doesn't work" reputation and it will take a long time 
to shake that after the issue is fixed. The other alternative is to be 
very clear that FS isn't intended for casual playing of MIDI files. 
Trying to write software for use by the masses is really hard because it 
is so difficult to anticipate what they will try to do and to grasp the 
level of understanding or lack thereof. I do front line support of the 
Miditzer, which has a lot of users who know almost nothing about MIDI. 
The experience gives you a very different perspective on what software 
needs to be.

Jim Henry

On 8/12/2010 5:30 AM, Bernd Casper wrote:
> If the user wants to use FS to perform MIDI-files created with a 
> "non-GS standard", it should be left up to him to feed FS with the 
> correct data. This should certainly be the kind of data from files 
> like Chris Collins' examples.
> Regards
> Bernd