Dolphin X6 & MIDI

Hello,
I'm new to Dolphin and desperately trying to use it as a multimedia
platform (you guessed it, I've been using Squeak for some time ;).

In particular, I'd like to be able to open MIDI ports, send MIDI
messages, etc. I found some posts from 2003 asking how to achieve this,
but they were unanswered...
Has someone developed a package to that effect (similar to Squeak's
Sound-Scores)? Or could someone provide me with some pointers (e.g, an
ActiveX control I could re-use) ?

Thanks!

Patrice,

> I'm new to Dolphin and desperately trying to use it as a multimedia
> platform (you guessed it, I've been using Squeak for some time ;).

Dolphin doesn't come with multimedia stuff in the box -- that's that Squeak's
for ;-)

> In particular, I'd like to be able to open MIDI ports, send MIDI
> messages, etc. I found some posts from 2003 asking how to achieve this,
> but they were unanswered...

One approach to MM in general would be to use DirectX, and in particular
DirectSound.  Object Arts used to have several wrapper packages for different
parts of DirectX.  You can find some discussion in the archives.   OA put the
wrapper up on www.object-arts.co.uk (not .com) but that site seems to be down
just now. If you like, I dig out my own copy.

I have no knowledge of DirectSound myself, so I don't know how easy it is to
use, nor how closely it corresponds to what you expect to do (I believe it
tries to hide the difference between MIDI and sampled sounds for instance).


There are third party MIDI ActiveX controls available -- if you can find them
amongst the plethora of MIDI players.  One is
    http://musicvideosport.com/hlp/MidiIOHelp.asp
Again, I have no knowledge of it myself, but there is a free download (which I
have not tested so I don't know whether it's a trail version or requires
purchase before it'll work at all) and some documentation on the website.


A completely different route, if you are up for the work, would be to create a
wrapper for MS's MIDI API's -- midiOutOpen() and its friends.   I haven't used
/that/ either ;-)  However the API does appear pretty similar to the "Wave Out"
part of the MM stuff, and I have created a wrapper for that.  If you fancy
going that route then you might find my code useful as a starting point.  It's
in the "Experiments" section of my website -- called 'CU Wave Out'.

Not much help, I'm afraid, but no one else had suggested something better...

    -- chris

Hi Chris,

> Not much help, I'm afraid, but no one else had suggested something better...
No, that's great. Many thanks for your reply; it gives me quite a few
pointers!

> One approach to MM in general would be to use DirectX,
[..]
> If you like, I dig out my own copy.
Yes, please - using DirectX makes sense although I don't know how to
interface with it from Dolphin, yet ;-)

> There are third party MIDI ActiveX controls available -- if you can find them
> amongst the plethora of MIDI players.  One is http://musicvideosport.com/hlp/MidiIOHelp.asp
Thanks for that - I'll definitely have a look.

> A completely different route, if you are up for the work, would be to create a
> wrapper for MS's MIDI API's -- midiOutOpen() and its friends.   I haven't used
> /that/ either ;-)  However the API does appear pretty similar to the "Wave Out"
> part of the MM stuff, and I have created a wrapper for that.  If you fancy
> going that route then you might find my code useful as a starting point.  It's
> in the "Experiments" section of my website -- called 'CU Wave Out'.
Found it. Cool - short of finding an ActiveX control (preferably free
:), I'll start with this option.

Thanks again,
    Patrice

<[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
Take a look at this package.  I developed this a while ago while trying to
teach a musically oriented friend Smalltalk.  It includes a very simple
virtual keyboard.  It was done quickly and is _very_ rough.  It will
probably require some work to make it production quality.  Look at the
package comment for a usage example.  Some of the MIDI API wrapping may be
of use to you.  I had some fun with it, but never had time to enhance it or
do more with it.

http://www.cjd77.com/smalltalk/temp/CJDMIDI.pac

Chris

Excellent - thank you, Chris.
Between your code sample and Chris's (the other Chris, Chris Uppal ;),
I have a great range of means to implement what I need.

Thank you very much, guys!