Re: [hatari-devel] Supporting both PortMidi and raw MIDI access at run-time?

[Thomas Huth <th.huth@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am Wed, 3 Aug 2022 00:49:32 +0300
schrieb Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> Hi,
> 
> Now that PortMidi support works pretty OK, I started to wonder whether 
> it would make sense in the long run to support both PortMidi and raw 
> MIDI access at same time, in same binary.

That would certainly give more flexibility to the users.

> Hatari could e.g. enable raw MIDI access at start, if midi output option 
> value points to an existing file on disk, and otherwise enable PortMidi 
> support.
> 
> Defaulting to PortMidi makes it easier for normal users to connect there 
> MIDI devices to Hatari, as one can just select MIDI application names in 
> SDL GUI.
> 
> IMHO it would be OK if enabling raw MIDI access that way were limited to 
> command line, as its main use is debugging and network connectivity, 
> where you need to do things on command line any way.
>
> SDL GUI would then select its Devices dialog GUI elements based on 
> whether raw MIDI file or PortMidi access was enabled at Hatari startup.

Now that sounds quite confusing for the users ... why not provide both
possibilities all the time, and e.g. make it selectable with a radio
button? Or if that takes too much space, make it selectable via arrows,
like the various joysticks in the joystick dialog?

> And defines in code would need to be changed so that raw MIDI access is 
> disabled, not when PortMidi is enabled, but for OSes that do not support 
> raw MIDI file access.

You can always redirect raw midi output to a file - I don't think we should
disable that possibility?

 Thomas