[PD] Using midi

[Peter P.]

* Roman Haefeli <reduzent at gmail.com> [2015-07-09 03:54]:
> On Thu, 2015-07-09 at 09:22 +0200, Pierre Massat wrote:
> 
> 
> > The problem lies with Pd now, in the sense that the midi port is not
> > open by default, and I have to manually open it every time I start
> > Pd. 
I posted similar questions to this list a few weeks ago, and IOhannes
also pointed me towards an external object for pd, saying 
"the "mediasettings" library provides a [midisettings] object that
allows you to query and set the midi devices."

Without jack I also use aconnect to connect alsa midi ports (although I
wished this could be handled by device name, not id number, from within
pd vanilla). There is an [aconnect] external as well.

> > So I was wondering if there was a way to open the port by default at
> > startup. Perhaps with a startup flag ?
> 
> pd -alsamidi -mididev 1
> 
> If you need more ports, specify more numbers to -mididev:
> 
> pd -alsamidi -mididev 1,2,3
> 
> BTW. there is also a menu entry "File" -> "Preferences" -> "Save all
> settings", which is supposed to write all current settings to a file (on
> Linux: ~/.pdsettings). It seems it saves the settings correctly, but pd
> doesn't create any ports when started without any cmd options. Maybe
> this is a bug?
It feels like one, but I have learned to accept it as a given thing. So,
whenever you want midi, also specify the -mididev along with it.

It would be so cool to have pd connect to alsa devices by name as well
as by alsa index number. (2 cents)

best, P