VMPK 0.4.0 Released

This release adds touch screen support (multi-touch) for all platforms, if it is supported by the OS and hardware. New RtMidi classes have been merged, which includes Jack MIDI support and a new network MIDI driver (UDP multicast) compatible with IpMIDI and QMidiNet. A Symbian^3 port has been made. There are new translations to Dutch and Swedish. A bug crashing the program when changing the octave base has been fixed.

My suggestion is to use the packages provided by your distribution when possible. If you prefer to compile the program yourself, I would like to give you some advices to build VMPK with the new features. First of all, you need CMake 2.8. The touch screen feature is available on all platforms, thanks to Qt >= 4.6 (but is better supported in Qt 4.7). There are two new build options:

• RTMIDI_DRIVER: selects the RtMidi backend. The default one depends on the OS. Allowed values: ALSA, JACK, COREMIDI, IRIX, WINMM, NET.

• PROGRAM_NAME: selects the executable name.

In Linux, you can compile VMPK with ALSA, JACK or NET drivers, but only one each time. You may build the program with different names, though, if you want several versions installed at once. For instance:

$ mkdir build-jack
$ cd build-jack
$ cmake .. -DRTMIDI_DRIVER=JACK -DPROGRAM_NAME=vmpk-jack -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release
$ make

$ mkdir build-net
$ cd build-net
$ cmake .. -DRTMIDI_DRIVER=NET -DPROGRAM_NAME=vmpk-net -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release
$ make

For the network version, there is a new help page here: http://vmpk.sourceforge.net/m/

Enjoy!

Akademy-es 2011

I've been attending the Akademy-es 2011 at Barcelona last week-end, instead of protesting and making the Spanish Revolution 2.0. It was a pleasure to meet Antonio Larrosa face to face again, after 5 years. We met the first time at Akademy-es 2006, also in Barcelona, where the idea for KMid2 was born. Hugs, Antonio!

My presentation was rejected. I've offered the same paper ("MIDI en Linux") used at the IX Jornadas de Software Libre. As an alternative, they proposed a lightning talk about KMid, but I wasn't interested in this format. My project is not KMid, but KMid is a piece of my project: providing Linux and KDE the MIDI tools that are needed, and this includes KMid, KMetronome, KMidimon, Drumstick, and some more programs.

About the conferences. Some talks were recycled, year after year, like the Valgrind talk by Albert that anyway deserves to be repeated even more times because it is a key tool to enhance the code quality of our projects. Other topics were brand new and interesting, for instance the half-rolling release and bundle system of the Chakra distribution, presented by Manuel Tortosa.

After the meetings, supper and drinks. This is the so called "social program". Everything is social, of course, when a couple of geeks meets to do things together. Saturday supper, I was shocked by a question of one of the attendees. He said to me something like this: Who wants MIDI at 2011, anyway? The answer for this question was in my paper, but he didn't bothered to read it. To summarize: MIDI is not an alternative to MP3, like drawing is not an alternative to photography. Who thinks that every program related to drawing should be banned from KDE? After all, it is a technology invented in the paleolithic era.

Mordor attacks

How to explain yesterday's events to all the inhabitants of Middle-earth?

The Squad of Orcs, here called "Orcos de Esquadra", attacked a large meeting of Hobbits at Shire's Square, when they were pacifically claiming real Democracy.

There have been 121 injured, including 37 orcs.

There was a repulsive Nazgul commanding the Orcs, Felip Puig.

Orcs and his commander defend the interests of the Black Tower, where evil dwells.

VMPK: new release, soon

A new VMPK release is coming, with some new features:

* Touch screen interface support.

* RtMidi 1.0.14, comes with Jack MIDI support. Note that RtMidi allows only one driver, so you need to choose at configuring time the desired MIDI backend.

* Network MIDI support (UDP multicast). It may be used in Linux, Windows and Mac, but is more interesting for portable devices. The protocol is compatible with ipMIDI for Windows and Mac (http://nerds.de) and with qmidinet and multimidicast in Linux/Unix (http://qmidinet.sourceforge.net).

* Symbian^3 port.

Symbian ports

I want to start this post with my biggest kudos to Nokia. I've been accepted in the Qt Ambassadors Program and VMPK is now in the Ambassador Showcase among other great Qt applications.

Not only that, they have sent me a great Nokia C7-00 smartphone as a gift. This device uses Symbian^3 and can be programmed using Qt. It has a touchscreen with two concurrent touch points. Just what I wanted for VMPK! So there is hope that the next VMPK release will enjoy multitouch support, thanks to Qt and Nokia.

There will be also a Symbian port of VMPK, but some tests using the device's MIDI synthesizer and a few other tests show that the audio latency is so big that it is unbearable for real time usage. Another direction to explore is the wireless network, to send MIDI data using for instance a protocol based on UDP multicast like QMidiCtl, a program by our fellow Qt Ambassador Rui Nuno Capela.

QMidiCtl was created for Maemo, and it is available for Nokia N900 devices. It can be compiled also in Linux and Windows, but required a few adaptations for Symbian. Anyway, it works well in my C7 and here is a proof

I've tested it sending MIDI events to Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. The complementary software for Linux is QMidiNet, also made by Rui. It is compatible with IpMIDI by nerds.de that is available for Windows and Mac OSX. This may open interesting possibilities for VMPK not only on smartphones, but also on netbooks and tablets...