Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO

[victor]

It's not a matter of trying to get a non-standard format
across. Not all; it is a matter of supporting more possibilities.
Besides, as I pointed out, MIDI will play alright on Csound,
even if it is a poor way of conveying musical data. 

But hey, if MIDI looks damn good to you, it is worthless 
trying to say anything else. Good luck.

Victor

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Albert Cahalan" <acahalan at gmail.com>
To: "victor" <Victor.Lazzarini at nuim.ie>; <devel at lists.laptop.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO


> On Jan 20, 2008 3:27 AM, victor <Victor.Lazzarini at nuim.ie> wrote:
> 
>> What you say does not make any sense to me. The MIDI
>> standard is *one* of many, and in fact the poorest of them
>> all. Besides Csound is probably the most used computer music
>> language with composers of Computer Music and its
>> score an integral part of it.
> 
> I know every developer wants to believe that their own
> file format is a standard (and a good one too!), but come
> on now. I went looking for stuff that supports csound.
> I found **one** program, about 5 wrappers (at least one
> of which also supported MIDI), and **zero** hardware.
> The situation with MIDI is radically different; there are
> a tremendous number of MIDI programs and devices.
> 
> Perhaps it will be more obvious this way:
> 
> Notice that the XO ships with a paint program. Suppose
> that the author invented a nifty new image format. Would
> it be good to use this format?
> 
> Notice that the XO ships with a word processor. This
> word processor could use RTF, OpenDocument, OOXML,
> TeX, *roff, XHTML... or a custom format that the authors
> just happen to have invented. What do you think, go with
> the custom format?
> 
> Notice that the XO lets you record sound. The most
> popular unpatented format was used. The authors could
> have invented their own sound format and used that though.
> See any problems with doing that?
> 
>> But it is not the only way that
>> can be used to run it: MIDI, OSC, API event calls, etc.,
>> are also possible.
> 
> Excellent. You're ready to drop the non-standard stuff.
> 
>> If anything we should promote better standards than limit
>> ourselves to a very poor one.
> 
> MIDI looks damn good to me.
> 
> If you really think you have it beat though, go get an RFC and
> an ISO standard. Get multiple major hardware manufacturers
> to start building your new standard into their hardware. See if
> you can get Microsoft and Apple to follow. Then maybe it will
> be time to begin the process of slowly saying goodbye to MIDI.
> Only then does the format belong on the XO.
>