[PD] Re: [PD-dev] We've got to undo the MIDI revolution! - Where isOSC?!

[Martin Peach]

Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

>On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, João Miguel Pais wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I have made this patch once for lan connections (for my improvisation
>>trio). it isn't comented, but it should be helpful. I've never used SC,
>>but we did max <-> pd with no probs (osc is osc, doesn't matter what's
>>sending it). better ask in the SC list for SC examples, I presume.
>>    
>>
>
>BTW why is the subjectline "We've got to undo the MIDI revolution!"? What 
>does it mean to undo the MIDI revolution, and what does it have to do with 
>switching to OSC ?
>
>Isn't OSC more MIDI than MIDI itself?
>  
>
Well MIDI is a lot more restricted in that most of the messages are 
predefined, while OSC lets you make up your own messages.

I was thinking about doing OSC over MIDI, something like this:
System Exclusive, "Educational Use" Manufacturer ID, followed by the 
string "OSC", followed by a text representation of the OSC message, e.g.
{0xF0 0x7D "OSC" "/vco/1/freq/,f 440.0" 0xF7}
This uses a bit less space than the official OSC message format which 
requires 4-byte padding and binary representations of numbers.
Sysex is problematic because of the manufacturer ID which is supposed to 
be registered with the Midi Manufacturers Association. 0x7D is for 
non-commercial use. "OSC" is there to avoid conflict with some other use 
of the 0x7D message. Obviously if there was an "OSC" manufacturer ID it 
would be shorter and simpler.
This could be useful as a way to extend OSC to microcontrollers that 
don't have the resources to handle ethernet packets.

Martin