MidiShare available for PC/Windows 3.x and Windows 95 (fwd)

From: letz@rd.grame.fr

MidiShare 1.54 beta for PC/Windows 3.x and Windows 95


MidiShare is a real-time multi-tasks Midi operating system specially devised
for the development of musical applications. Its innovative features and
careful
design, result of 6 years of research and development, provide developers with
a powerful and efficient toolbox for developing professional Midi applications.

MidiShare is based on a client/server model. It is composed of four main
components : an event manager, a time manager, a task manager and a
communication manager. The event manager provides an uniform way to process
and store midi events. The time manager and the task manager control the
real-time behavior of applications. The communication manager is in charge
of both inter-applications and midi communications.

The system can be delivered for Apple Macintosh or Atari computers and now
PC under Windows 3.x and Windows 95.

MidiShare version 1.54 for Windows is delivered as a 16 Bit Dll, support
up to 64
client applications, and 256 Midi ports. Interfaces are available for C,C++
and Common Lisp.

- TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS -

MidiShare offers several advantages to developers in terms of code efficiency,
portability and easiness of developing sophisticated real time Midi
applications. It avoids many complexities and limitations of other Midi
operating systems.

Communications are based on high level events instead of packets of midi
bytes. These events are easier and faster to process than packets of Midi
bytes. For example large system exclusive messages never need to be splitted
into multiple packets. They are sent, received and processed as a whole like
any other Midi events. Events are not limited to strict Midi messages.
MidiShare offers full support for Midi File 1.0 events and future versions
will provide additional events for multimedia.

The communication manager allows multi-ports configurations (up to 256 physical
ports) to be easily handled. All MidiShare events are stamped with a full Midi
device address defined by a physical port number and a Midi channel. Client
applications just need one input point and one output point to communicate with
all the Midi devices (up to 4096 devices). Connections between applications are
easier for users. Application code is simpler and the full device address of an
event is never lost during inter-application communications.

MidiShare includes its own dynamic memory manager, specially designed for
real-time operations at interrupt level. This provides applications with a
convenient and efficient way for storing, copying and deleting Midi events
without using the host memory manager. All MidiShare internal buffers and
queues are dynamically sized avoiding overflow problems encountered in
other systems.

Several mechanisms are proposed to control the real time behavior of Midi
applications. The time manager offers 1ms resolution and supports accurate
SMPTE synchronization in a transparent way. Application functions called
alarms can be installed to deal with incoming events in real time at
interrupt level.

The heart of MidiShare is a real time scheduler. It allows events to be sent
in the future as well as delayed function calls (functions to be called in
the future). Delayed function call is a very fast and powerful mechanism for
complex multi-tasking applications when multiple computing need to be done
in parallel. A proprietary scheduling algorithm ensures a very low constant
time scheduling costs per event, even when the scheduler is heavily loaded.


MidiShare is a freeware software. It has been developed at GRAME. General and
technical informations can be found at :

http://www.grame.fr/english/MidiShare.html

A ftp server is available at ftp.grame.fr


Please, direct any comment or request to the following address:
GRAME Research Lab.
6 quai Jean Moulin BP 1185
69202 LYON CEDEX 01 FRANCE
e-mail : msh@rd.grame.fr

- -------------- GRAME
6 quai Jean Moulin BP 1185
69202 LYON CEDEX 01
Ph (33) 72.07.37.00 Fax (33) 72.07.37.01
Web : http://www.grame.fr

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