+<h2>What Can Ardour Do With MIDI?</h2>
+<p>
+ <dfn><abbr title="Musical Instrument Digital
+ Interface">MIDI</abbr></dfn> is a way to describe musical
+ performances and to control music hardware and software.
+</p>
+<p>Ardour can import and record MIDI data, and perform a variety of
+ editing operations on it. Furthermore, MIDI can be used to control
+ various functions of Ardour.
+</p>
+
+<h2>MIDI Handling Frameworks</h2>
+<p>
+ MIDI input and output for Ardour are handled by the same "engine"
+ that handles audio input and output. Up to release 3.5, that means
+ that all MIDI I/O takes place via JACK. JACK itself uses the
+ native MIDI support of the operating system to receive and send
+ MIDI data. The native MIDI support provides device drivers for MIDI
+ hardware and libraries needed by software applications that want to
+ work with MIDI.
+</p>
+
+<dl>
+<dt>OS X</dt>
+<dd> <dfn>CoreMIDI</dfn> is the standard MIDI framework on OSX systems.
+</dd>
+<dt>Linux</dt>
+<dd>
+ <dfn><abbr title="Advanced Linux Sound API">ALSA</abbr> MIDI</dfn>
+ is the standard MIDI framework on Linux systems.
+</dd>
+</dl>
+
+<p class="note">
+ On Linux systems, <dfn>QJackCtl</dfn> control software displays ALSA MIDI
+ ports under its "ALSA" tab (it does not currently display CoreMIDI
+ ports). By contrast, JACK MIDI ports show up under
+ the <kbd class="menu">MIDI</kbd> tab in QJackCtl.
+</p>
+
+<h2>JACK MIDI Configuration</h2>
+<p>
+By default, JACK will <strong>not</strong> automatically detect and use existing MIDI
+ports on your system. You must choose one of several ways
+of <dfn>bridging</dfn> between the native MIDI frameworks
+(e.g. CoreMIDI or ALSA) and JACK MIDI, as described in the sections
+below.
+</p>