Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 132892
RFE: RFE: add better-sounding patchset to timidity++
Last modified: 2014-03-16 22:48:24 EDT
Description of problem: There has been a discussion on the fedora-devel mailing list about adding better midi support to Fedora, and this is what i came up with. I suggested using the timidity softsynt (which seems to have been excluded from fc2 standard install) - as this works without a fiddle (you can't say that about getting an AWE card to work - and still timidity sounds better). Well: here is how i did it: 1. download the eawpats src.rpm (all other links was broken). Try to install it with rpm -ivh, find that it broke timidity (made it only spew a lot of garbage, f.ing up my terminal, and generally not do anything usefull). Reinstall timidity. 2. Open the source-rpm in fileroller. Find a .rar file inside it. Open that in file-roller. 3. Extract the rar. Encountered a bug in file-roller: if i opened a zip file (the src.rpm) in file-roller, and then opened another zip (the RAR archive inside), everything works out well. But if i then close the first window, and THEN try to unzip (unrar acctually) the rar, it simply does nothing. Absolutly nothing - think this might be some of the same case as this bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=132478 4. Try again, and extract the .rar into /usr/local/eawpats 5. Read "install.txt" carefully, and insert those lines at the end of /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg: #extra patches dir /usr/local/eawpats source gravis.cfg source gsdrums.cfg source gssfx.cfg source xgmap2.cfg 6. Play a midifile: [kyrre@kyrre MIDI]$ timidity -int Pink\ Floyd/Time.mid (the -int option gives a nice ncurces "gui" which shows some stats etc) The patchset is found at: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/mirror/redhat/linux/planetccrma/all/en/os/SRPMS/timidity-eawpats-12-1.src.rpm It would certainly be great if timidity with a really good sounding patchset was included in FC3 (can you please change the version field to the correct for this?) Then there is just ONE thing remaining: writing a good (GTK?) app to control timidity, as kmidi is dead...
Fedora Core 2 is now maintained by the Fedora Legacy project for security updates only. If this problem is a security issue, please reopen and reassign to the Fedora Legacy product. If it is not a security issue and hasn't been resolved in the current FC3 updates or in the FC4 test release, reopen and change the version to match.
stupid me. Should probably been closed, not moved to fc3. but as the same problem exists in that release as well... Bill?
Hmmm. Midi isn't my thing, but could this bug maybe be re-summarized as "RFE: add better-sounding patchset to timidity++"? Also, Google tells me there seems to be some doubt about the legal status of the "eawpats" files you're suggesting -- which means they really can't get included in Fedora at all.
Okay. Didn't know that - but something surely is possible to find. timidity only requires some dead-standard SoundFonts, right? I think i know somebody i can ask about those, maybe he'll even make some good ones :) BTW was timitity included in FC3? I'm stuch on FC2 for the moment, need some kind of external storage to move my data before jumping ship (to FC4, probably. Isn't that long wait anyway, and FC2 is pretty nice :) ) Probably the best thing would be to have some midi-support in gstreamer - and have it decide "if MIDI soundboard, use that, else use timidity" - possible with some kind of possibility for manual override for baaaad sounding boards such as SB16 etc. Those midi paches could also be used for uploading to soundboards that requires that (my AWE64 won't play any midi unless it's initialized by uploading sound patches to it's internal RAM. A AWE 32 i have lying around even has RAM expansion slots :P )
Timidity is in FC2, FC3, and the FC4 devel tree. This doesn't sound like something that'd be likely to be brought into the current release but maybe could be added in the future. And, removing myself from the CC list here, because as I said, MIDI isn't my thing. :)
Any decissions on this?
The problem with this patchset is, that there are parts, which are not usable for us because of license problems. I am sorry, but I dan not fix this.