leland@joevax.UUCP (Lee Woodbury) (09/12/85)
As a relative neophyte, I, for one, was delighted with Bob McQueer's "MIDI Primer" posted to net.music.synth recently. Thank you, Bob. Reading it, however, and having a computer science background, I couldn't help thinking that the MIDI software spec would be even clearer if it were presented in the style of context-free language specifications, in Backus-Naur Form (BNF) or some other context-free grammar. [Aside: is MIDI a context-free language?] Also, it seems to me that such a specification, in conjunction with a "compiler-compiler" program like yacc, would be a useful step toward creating a software module which parses MIDI IN and/or generates MIDI OUT sequences. Is anyone out there aware of such a spec (in the public domain), done either in the context of simply describing MIDI or in the context of MIDI software development? I'm not very experienced with MIDI: are there reasons why this might NOT be feasible or useful? Does it strike others as a good idea? Much obliged for any response. Feel free to mail to me, but post to the net if you think it's of general interest. -- Lee Woodbury Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) 435 South Street, MRE 2D-290 Morristown, NJ 07960 201-829-4535 ..!{allegra,ihnp4}!bellcore!joevax!leland