RE: Adding MIDI APIs to Audio WG Charter (was: MIDI enumeration (was: Re: getUserMedia use cases))

One more thing, just to help clarify the issues:



  _____  

From: Chris Wilson [mailto:cwilso@google.com] 

 
>>IE at least supports playing MIDI files via <bgsound> element 
 
There is absolutely nothing preventing browsers from implementing support
for .MID files in <audio> (and wasn't anything preventing them from using
<object>, either - in fact, I think this works on Windows machines).  IE
would be a natural candidate to do this first, since they ONLY ship on
platforms that are known to have an installed GM synth (as per Tom's mail).


I think IE plays SMF in a browser because not only does Windows ship with a
MIDI renderer (MS GS Synth) but it also ships with an SMF player
(wmplayer.exe has been able to play SMF as far back as 1990). 
 
I suspect other browsers could use the same tools (on Windows) if they
wanted to, but there's no SMF player built into OSX, and the one in QT is
gone now, so browsers on Macs would need to contain their own SMF player...
not impossible, but certainly more work than browsers on PCs.
 
BTW, I believe Android OS comes with an SMF player and GM synth, too.
 
- TW

Received on Thursday, 2 February 2012 03:58:19 UTC