On Wed, Aug 02, 2017 at 12:42:28AM -0400, Brian Callahan wrote: > Hi ports -- > > The recent conversation about CorsixTH I had with Donovan Watteau reminded > me that I always hated the fact that Timidity was never packageable since it > used the copyrighted goemon patchset. So I fixed it, and now Timidity is > packageable. > > It turns out that soundfonts and GUS patch files are closely related enough > that it's rather trivial to convert soundfonts to GUS patchsets. So I took > TimGM6mb, a GPLv2-licensed soundfont from MuseScore 1.3 and converted it to > a GUS patchset. And I made Timidity use my patchset instead of the goemon > patchset--problem solved! Yes, it sounds different from the goemon patchset > but I think that's a small price to pay if you happen to like the new > patchset less. > > FWIW, I also did this with the generaluser-gs-soundfont package we offer. > While the results sound so much better, it ballooned the package to 1.2 GB. > I don't think we want that unless there's huge clamor for it (but I am happy > to share that patchset if people want it--ping me off-list). For comparison, > using the TimGM6mb patchset shrunk the timidity package down to 9.1 MB from > 10.8 MB (with the goemon patchset). > > I would like to go through the tree and add an RDEP on timidity for all the > ports that have pkg-readmes that say something like "install timidity for > sound" and whatnot. > > Take maintainer too. Not because I think timidity will ever be updated, but > people should know to yell at me if there's something wrong with the > patchset.
I would think audio/fluidsynth would be a better choice for using soundfonts. timidity predates it. Ideally a port would be able to handle sndio midi itself like scummvm or dosbox, some link fluidsynth as a library. midiplay(1) will also work as expected if fluidsynth is running.
