http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10495
--- Comment #219 from Ben Klein shacklein@gmail.com 2010-02-13 17:39:12 --- (In reply to comment #218)
(In reply to comment #217)
And I'm still waiting on an answer to how MIDI is handled.
counterquestion: how many apps in the Top-10 lists (http://appdb.winehq.org/) use it? To my knowledge the count is exactly 0 and those are the apps that wine is mostly used for. I agree that there are some apps that use the MIDI interfaces, but: nobody said that wine-alsa should be removed so people who really need midi can still use wine-alsa.
The counter-argument is not valid. MIDI must be handled, and in the correct cross-platform way suitable for pulse, in order for the driver to be seriously considered. It's a subset of feature-completeness.
Also (a little off-toppic now ;)) aren't there software midi synthesizers that wine could link against so the audio backend doesn't need to provide MIDI playback support? or does that have a bad impact on performance (talking about "normal" use cases here, not like FruityLoops with tons of different channels)?
Yes, but the Wine audio driver still needs to support a connection to a (virtual or real) MIDI device. Otherwise, how will apps be able to talk to the software MIDI synthesiser?