MIDI isn't just USB, though. It's a protocol that can happen over many modes of transport; some of the stage systems I mentioned use ethernet, or there's still tons of hardware with actual MIDI ports (I have 2 IN/OUTs via my DAC connected to the machine I'm typing this from, for instance). We depend on the OS to expose these as MIDI, whether it starts as class compliant USB MIDI, or otherwise. If we went with a USB API, we'd run into the same issue with MIDI that we would with HID, the fact that most operating systems have a manager for this. It seems easiest to work with that manager, not with low level USB itself, unless we want to run into a multi-platform detaching nightmare. But, this is part of the same problem that stopped us with USB the first time around: Where does the OS stop and the browser begin?
BTW, the USB conversation is apparently starting back up again. There's been action on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=webusb in the past couple of weeks. ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jonas Sicking" <jo...@sicking.cc> > To: "Robert O'Callahan" <rob...@ocallahan.org> > Cc: dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org, "Leman Bennett (Omega X)" > <Redacted.For.Spam@request.contact> > Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2014 11:08:08 PM > Subject: Re: Intent to implement: WebMIDI > > On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Robert O'Callahan > <rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Leman Bennett (Omega X) < > > Redacted.For.Spam@request.contact> wrote: > > > >> Is that really necessary? It seems superfluous. > >> > > > > It's necessary in that there's no other way to use this hardware from a Web > > app. > > > > The only question is whether it's high-enough priority to work on instead > > of something else. > > The other question is if there is a better way than adding explicit > APIs for every conceivable type of hardware that you can plug in to a > USB port (I'm assuming that midi ports are usually connected to > computers through USB these days). > > It doesn't really seem like a scalable solution. > > A long time ago we talked about just writing a very low-level USB API, > then enabling signed snippets of javascript to create page-exposed > APIs on top of that. This way we wouldn't have to go through the long > and expensive process of standardizing and implementing APIs for > everything that can be plugged into a USB port. > > These signed snippets of javascripts wouldn't need to be installed by > the user, but could be linked to by the page that wants to use the > API. It would however need to be signed by all browser vendors that > are interested in making the library work. > > However it's probably going to take a very long time for something > like this to actually get standardized and implemented. If it'll > happen at all. So if we think that WebMIDI is something that we want > soon, then we definitely couldn't wait. > > / Jonas > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
