[L2Ork-dev] Desktop files

[Albert Graef]

Hi Ico,

While preparing the pd-l2ork setup for my courses this semester, I
just noticed rev. ed3e84b: "improved shortcuts so that pd-l2ork
auto-creates midi ports on start-up"

I realize that some ppl might find this kind of default setup
convenient. But if I invoke a Pd patch from the file manager then your
settings override the MIDI devices setup that I have in my .pdl2ork
file, so I have to manually edit the desktop file to get rid of this.

To make things worse, the options you use in the desktop file create
just one MIDI input and output port, in which case that ALSA MIDI
auto-connect (mis)feature kicks in, meaning that pd-l2ork will
auto-connect to *all* ALSA MIDI ports. This is a real hazard if you
have ALSA set up so that it provides MIDI loopback aka "MIDI Through"
devices (which seems to be the default these days). Those MIDI
auto-connects will then give you awful MIDI feedbacks.

I'd rather configure my MIDI devices in .pdl2ork and set up my MIDI
connections using a patchbay like qjackctl's. So my question is, would
it be possible to revert that change or at least create *two* MIDI
devices (changing '-mididev 0' to '-mididev 0,1' in the desktop files
would do that) so that the MIDI auto-connects are prevented?

Or better yet, completely remove the auto-connects from Pd's ALSA MIDI
driver (s_midi_alsa.c, line 123 ff.). AFAICT this stuff was removed in
vanilla Pd quite some time ago already. (I can prepare a corresponding
pull request if you want, but the required changes are really trivial.
Basically just getting rid of the autoconnect variable at line 58 of
s_midi_alsa.c and completely removing the if statement at line 123ff.
should do the trick.)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  aggraef at gmail.com
WWW:    https://plus.google.com/111193356966611167754