MIDI does support non-Western music (was: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO)

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Albert Cahalan wrote:
> imm ian writes:
> On 22 Jan 2008, at 4:11, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> 
>>> You don't need to abuse pitch bends. MIDI lets you
>>> redefine the pitches of the notes. You can redefine
>>> middle C to be 1234 Hz if you like.
>> Mmm, well, yes, but...
> 
> No "but". You can redefine at will, for individual notes.
> 
> If you need a player, try timidity. If you have obsolete
> equipment that can only do pitch bends, you can use Scalia
> to convert a MIDI file. Scalia can also convert back.
> 
>> It's not so much the pitches that are the issue, it's the
>> intervals, and MIDI kind of constrains what you can do about
>> that, so you do kind of end up abusing pitch bend...
> 
> Nope. (not that abusing pitch bend is a tragedy though)
> 
> Since 1996, the MIDI tuning specification has allowed you to
> set the pitch to within 1/16384 of a semitone.
> 
> Since 1999, the MIDI tuning extensions have made this a bit
> more efficient.
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I'm still trying to get scala (not scalia -- he is or was a Supreme 
Court justice) to run on the XO. It requires some Ada run-time libraries 
and the GTK Ada bindings. It requires "gtkada" 2.8. Is that compatible 
with what's on the XO?