[alsa-devel] Type safe Haskell interface to ALSA sequencer
Clemens Ladisch
clemens at ladisch.de
Tue May 25 17:27:30 CEST 2010
Henning Thielemann wrote:
> ...
> However I wondered, why I could create writeable ports in a output-only
> sequencer. Does this make sense? Would it be reasonable to forbid
> writeable ports in output sequencers and readable ports in input
> sequencers by Haskell types?
The PORT_CAP flags say what _other_ clients are allowed to do with the
port, but they do not enforce restrictions for the port's client itself.
For example, aplaymidi needs a source port for the events it sends, but
this port isn't of interest to any other application, so it doesn't set
_any_ CAP flag.
Whether an application can read/write events is determined only by the
INPUT/OUTPUT flags given to snd_seq_open.
> Is there a difference between cap_read|cap_write and cap_duplex?
In theory, the latter indicates that input and output are allowed at the
same time. (In practice, nobody cares.)
> I also wondered why there can be several ports in one sequencer, since
> multiple clients can connect to one port,
MIDI has a limit of 16 channels per port, so it is often necessary to
have multiple ports per device.
> and event_input and event_output have no port argument.
Events are sent between clients; their source and destination ports are
more like labels.
> Further I wondered why queues are not bound to a specific port. Can
> queues be shared amongst ports?
Queues are about _timing_; they allow events sent through them to be
timestamped and/or to be delivered at a specific time.
Queues do not have a direct relationship with ports, the events sent
through them have.
> Is it sensible to have multiple queues in one sequencer?
If you want to use multiple timers.
> Why has sync_output_queue no queue argument?
Because it does not actually apply to a sequencer queue. Events that
are scheduled to be sent later remain in the sending client's output
buffer until they are actually delivered. This output buffer is called
"queue" here.
> ... it would be worth to mention this in the API documentation.
I've added an entry to my TODO list to move the "documentation" TODO
entry further up.
> In another example I called sync_output_queue in order to wait for all
> events being sent, but it aborted with "Operation not permitted", whereas
> I have seen example code where it works. What are the preconditions to
> calling sync_output_queue?
In theory, none except having the client opened for output, and I don't
see any code that could return -EPERM for this.
Regards,
Clemens
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