Re: [Web MIDI API] send() method should also allow 3 shorts + timestamp

Actually, the main reason that I finally talked myself into the array was
that it does not work well to have

send( data0, data1, data2, timestamp)

because many MIDI messages are one or two bytes, not three.  You need the
number of data parameters to be variable, but also the timestamp to be
optional (I feel very strongly about this).

Not sure why this was a surprise - we talked about it at great length in
the bug and in email.  Perhaps surprise that I caved.  :)  But seriously,
that's why I wrote the polyfill - because it let me test out the API in
practice.  I couldn't come up with anything that was easier to use.

If we were to consider changing this to overload it, I'd suggest

void send ( sequence<short> data, optional DOMHighResTimeStamp? timestamp );
void send ( short status, optional short data1, optional short data2 );

that is, omitting the timestamp altogether in the separate data byte
version (that's what we had before).  I didn't (and don't) see any other
way to make the overload work, without making timestamp non-optional and
moving it the front (which I am very against) or making it only work with
3-byte messages (which I think is a bad option also, as it will make it
confusingly hard, for example, to send program change messages or system
real-time messages).



On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Marcos Caceres <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Monday, December 17, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Jussi Kalliokoski wrote:
>
> > Sure!
> >
> > output.send(90, 60, 122, 100) // wat! looks like a part of the data?!
> >
> > output.send([90, 60, 122], 100) // now the data is separate from the
> timestamp
> >
> > My point is that if you think about the action the send() has, it sends
> some data at a specified time; that's two arguments, data and timestamp.
> You can go arbitrarily splitting that into more arguments, but what's the
> point?
> Sold:) Thanks Jussi, that makes sense now.
>
>
>