[originally sent only to -devel, now sending to -users as well] Hi,
Recently fluid-soundfont hit the archives (and since then, Debian). This is the first Free GM SoundFont, and is thus pretty damn useful. If you don't know what GM is, then this question probably isn't for you. fluid-soundfont enables synthesis that requires, you guessed it, a SoundFont. There are a number of packages in the archive which could potentially benefit: timidity, fluidsynth, mscore. I'm concentrating on mscore, because currently it links against the fluidsynth library (rather than use the ALSA sequencer), using that to synthesise audio. FluidSynth (as far as I am aware, and certainly in the way that mscore uses it) does not support the smaller freepats patches to do synthesis, and requires a soundfont. This direct linking makes it very easy, provided there is access to a SoundFont, to just get up and go: open mscore, and there's no other faffing about required before you can make noises. Naturally, the problem lies in that caveat: "provided there is access to a SoundFont". By default, there isn't, and so mscore doesn't make any sound. The last upload of mscore (-0ubuntu2) contained a patch to default it to look for the fluid-soundfont-gm file. This means that, if fluid-soundfont-gm is installed, mscore will Just Work. Because of this huge boost in functionality, the mscore package Recommends the fluid-soundfont-gm package. I would have set it to Depends, but there are two factors against this: 1. It does not fundamentally require the SoundFont, and can just as well (though with a little more effort), use a user-supplied font, as the package's install notification advised in the original -0ubuntu1 version. Or, it can just work silently. 2. fluid-soundfont is *huge* at about 130MiB. If mscore depended on fluid-soundfont-gm, it would force the user to download an excessive amount over the three meg required to get the program to run. Now, the question is: do we ship mscore on the DVD for Hardy? I think that this would be an excellent move: get a relatively new package a plentitude of airtime to get bugs shown up and ironed out, and improve awareness of a massively potential Sibelius alternative. Plus, it would fill the niche that Sibelius does on Windows, but on Ubuntu Studio. Should we decide to ship mscore, we then have to decide whether to ship fluid-soundfont. As the DVD is already 877MiB, which is a lot to download, users are clearly prepared to download that much. Why would an extra 130MiB be too much pain? It would enable a lot of functionality (and during the Intrepid cycle, I'll be further integrating fluid-soundfont to allow it to replace freepats wherever possible). If we do ship mscore, but not fluid-soundfont, users are purely going to have to download the soundfont separately (thereby increasing the effects of waiting for download: rather than wait once in one long chunk, perhaps overnight, users would have to wait twice, which feels exaggerated), or find an alternative, or work silently. Personally, I do not have absolute pitch, and would prefer nice, crisp synthesis to silence. If this means adding an extra 130MiB, then so be it: the advantages brought certainly outweigh that singular negative, especially considering that the free software environment is rather biased towards broadband users. To sign off, I'll just ask again the question asked in the subject: do we ship mscore and/or fluid-soundfont in Ubuntu Studio 8.04? -- Toby Smithe -- Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
