improve CSS and tagging of platform-specifics.

[ardour-manual-diverged] / _manual / 03_setting-up-your-system / 05_setting-up-midi.html

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 title: Setting Up MIDI
 ---                        
- <h2>MIDI Handling Frameworks</h2>
-<h4>CoreMIDI</h4>
-<p> CoreMIDI is the standard MIDI framework to comunicate with MIDI hardware on OSX systems. It provides drivers and libraries needed by MIDI clients. These ports do not show up in qjackctl</p>
+
+<h2>What Can Ardour Do With MIDI?</h2>
+<p>
+  <dfn><abbr title="Musical Instrument Digital Interface">MIDI</abbr></dfn>
+  is a way to describe music data and to control music hardware and 
+  software. 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>
+<p class="note">
+  Ardour does not include a <dfn>synthesis engine</dfn> to produce audio 
+  from MIDI data, but relies on plugins or external hard- and software 
+  for the task. This can be a stumbling block for first time users who 
+  expect MIDI input to result in audio output by default.<br />
+  Please see the section on working with plug-ins for more information on
+  turning MIDI data into audio output.</p>
+
+<h2>MIDI Handling Frameworks</h2>
+<p>
+  Ardour supports various ways of sending and receiving MIDI data:
+</p>
+
+<h3>CoreMIDI</h3>
+<p>
+  <dfn>CoreMIDI</dfn> is the standard MIDI framework on OSX systems. 
+  It provides drivers for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI
+  software clients. 
+</p>
+
 <h4>ALSA MIDI</h4>
-<p> ALSA MIDI is the standard MIDI framework to comunicate with MIDI hardware on Linux systems. It provides drivers and libraries needed by MIDI clients. These ports show up under the "MIDI" tab in qjackctl</p>
-<h4> JACK MIDI</h4>
-<p> JACK MIDI is a framework used to comunicate between JACK MIDI software clients. On OSX JACK MIDI provides 0 jitter and a fixed latency of 1 period MIDI routing. On Linux JACK MIDI provides zero latency, except when there is a midi loop where the latency would fixed at 1 perioud, and zero jitter MIDI routing. These ports show up under the "JACK MIDI" tab in qjackctl</p>
+<p>
+  <dfn><abbr title="Advanced Linux Sound API">ALSA</abbr> MIDI</dfn>
+  is the standard MIDI framework on Linux systems. It provides drivers 
+  for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI software clients.
+</p>
+<p>
+  The <dfn>QJackCtl</dfn> control software displays ALSA MIDI ports 
+  under its "ALSA" tab (it does not currently display CoreMIDI ports).
+</p>
+
+<h4>JACK MIDI</h4>
+
+<p> 
+  <dfn><abbr title="JACK Audio Connection Kit">JACK</abbr> MIDI</dfn> 
+  is a framework used to comunicate between JACK MIDI software clients. 
+  It provides zero jitter and a fixed latency of one <dfn>period</dfn>,
+  the same latency as for JACK audio.
+</p>
+<p>
+  JACK MIDI ports show up under the <kbd class="menu">MIDI</kbd> tab in
+  QJackCtl.
+</p>
     
+<p>
+  There are 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>
+
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