[PD] auto-adding MIDI devices

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Mar 26, 2012, at 11:02 AM, Martin Peach wrote:

> On 2012-03-26 10:09, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> 
>> On Mar 26, 2012, at 2:45 AM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
>> 
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>>> On 2012-03-23 14:29, kristof lauwers wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> If you are going to make changes to the midi device setup, i have two
>>>> other suggestions:
>>>> 
>>>> - in the midi settings dialog (on windows),  you can only select two
>>>> midi output devices. the only way i found to use more then 2 devices is
>>>> by adding them manually in the registry. it would be nice if you could
>>>> add at least 4 devices from the dialog..
>>> 
>>> why 4?
>>> (and not, say, 37?)
>>> 
>>>> as for your idea to automatically open a midi devices, guess it can be
>>>> useful for people who have only one device, but as son as you connect an
>>>> external midi device, most of the time you have also an internal midi
>>>> playback on the soundcard and you don't know which one is first in
>>>> windows' enumeration..
>>> 
>>> i'm also rather sceptical about auto-connection, esp. when based on
>>> numerical IDs.
>>> e.g. i don't see a big advantage to autoconnect to a MIDI-thru device,
>>> that will loopback all the data i just sent.
>> 
>> I think that having something setup by default is more helpful than nothing, as long as it doesn't cause problems.  Then for people who want to have it setup differently, they can do what they've always done.
>> 
> 
> What if I'm also using jack's patchbay to set up a default connection? Is it possible to have Pd set up a default connection only if no connection already exists?

The logic I'm thinking is pretty straightforward: if there are no MIDI settings in the preferences, then automatically assign the ones it finds.  The one thing this would prevent is having the user have MIDI on but force no assigned devices.  That seems like a worthwhile trade-off for having newbies be able to use MIDI without doing anything but send MIDI data to a MIDI object.

.hc



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