Re: Ada and MidiShare

[Stephen Leake <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov>]

"aleistad" <sorry@no.spam.wanted> writes:

> ATM I'm looking at the possibility of using Win32Ada to build a minimal
> MIDI/audio I/O library. If that fails I will try to use C/gcc and the winmm
> library, then make bindings for Ada. This route looks like it should be
> doable with a minimun of work, although my lack of both Windows and Ada
> experience will probably lead me through a fairly long path to get there. I
> will report on my findings to this group.
> 
> BTW: is there any reason to not use Win32Ada in this day and age (the GNAT
> one)? It looks like development was stopped many years ago.

Well, those of us who have written thick bindings to windows (CLAW,
GWindows, Windex), don't use Win32Ada, becuase it has a "C" look and
feel. We prefer to bind directly to the Win32 API as we need to.

I suggest you consider writing an extension to CLAW or GWindows to
support MIDI. That will make your life easier, and make it easier for
everyone else to use as well.

You could also extend Windex, but that library is officially retired
now.

> The more I look around, the more I think that what Ada needs is a
> very minimal binding to the (Win,Mac,Linux) host platforms MIDI and
> audio I/O, leaving out all the huge (C/C++) libraries. 

Yes.

> Then this minimal I/O library can be used to build a "native
> standard" Ada MIDI/audio library "the way it's meant to be" (tm) .

Yes. If it turns out that the MIDI library doesn't need anything from
GWindows or CLAW, then making it stand-alone would be fine; then it
could be used with GtkAda.

> Portaudio, SDL, FMOD and their siblings are surely nice libraries,
> but in this case (minimal I/O) they are overkill.

Yes.

-- 
-- Stephe