Scala version 1.0 available now

Version 1.0 of my tuning program Scala for MS-DOS is now available to
be downloaded by FTP from:
ftp://ella.mills.edu/ccm/tuning/software/pc/scala/scala.zip

People without FTP access can ask me for a uuencoded e-mail or floppy
disk.

Scala is a tuning editor, librarian and analysis tool.
It allows scales to be created and manipulated in many different ways.
It has more than 130 different commands, but is easy to learn.

The current version does not have the capability to directly access a
MIDI interface. However the program can write a tuning dump to a
standard MIDI-file, so with a suitable MIDI-file player this is only a
minor inconvenience. Perhaps a future version will have this
capability. I decided to make the program available now, because I
don't know when I will have time to implement it. A command file plus
a MIDI-file player is included that makes downloading from within
Scala transparent. Maybe it's even better this way, because there are
different MIDI-interfaces, like the one on the SoundBlaster card, the
MPU-401, the Key Midiator interface, etc. and I can't support all of
them.
Several people have asked me to support the Midiator interface made
by Key Electronics and I feel a bit now like I am letting them down,
so does anyone know of a MIDI-file player program for it that
runs under DOS?
This release is a few months later than I anticipated but the extra
time allowed me to make some useful improvements. I intend to keep
doing that.
The user interface is one with a command line and a text screen. A
graphical interface would help first-time users, but there are several
reasons why there is none. Scala runs on more than one computer
platform, and Motif and MS-Windows are sufficiently different to
warrant a maintenance nightmare. Secondly, I prefer spending my time
implementing real tuning functionality. The way it is now, porting the
program is almost trivial. The commands are sufficiently verbose to be
remembered easily and there is online help. And for experienced users
a command line interface works just as quick or quicker.
There is no version of Scala for the Apple Macintosh and it is very
unlikely that there will be one in the near future.

The currently supported tuning protocols are:
Yamaha DX7II/TX802
Yamaha SY77/TG77
Yamaha TX81Z/DX11/DX27/DX100
Yamaha TX81Z/DX11/DX27/DX100 full keyboard dump
E-mu Morpheus
E-mu Proteus
Ensoniq EPS/EPS16/ASR10
MIDI Tuning Standard

To install, unpack scala.zip in an empty directory, read the file
read.me and type "scala" to run. Then type "help" or "h" to see which
are the available commands.

The current amount of source code is 28578 lines of text of which
23559 are code. The number of Ada statements is 13527. This is roughly
equivalent to about 40000 code-lines of C.

Scale files in Scala format can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/MIDI/DOC/scales.zip
Use the "-a" option while unzipping.
The accompanying archive listing is
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/pub/MIDI/DOC/scales.doc

I want to thank the following people for their support, help and
ideas. In alphabetical order: John Chalmers, Steve Curtin, Paul Fly,
Brian McLaren, Gary Morrison, John Pusey and Carter Scholz.
Special thanks go to John Pusey for making suggestions for improvement
over a period of 1.5 year and spotting several bugs.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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