[LV2] LV2 + midnam

[Robin Gareus]

Hi LV2ers,

I recently had another WTF moment when seeing
http://libremusicproduction.com/tutorials/using-avl-drumkits-fluid-synth-ardour

That's about 5 steps too many.

Wouldn't it be nice if the plugin could inform the host that it's a
percussive synth and also provide names for notes, controls & patches,
etc, maybe even note-range?

Is anyone here interested to help spec this out?

The simplest is probably to pass around .midnam files.
Since mappings in plugins can change dynamicall a LV2 extension:
 - host asks plugin for the midnam
 - plugin can ask host to re-read it.

The nice part is that most DAWs and sequencers already support midnam.

Then again midnam is overkill, ugly and not well suited for plugin cases
where the settings can change. Generating and passing variable length
XML around in a C API is far from elegant.

How about a dedicated API that allows the host to specifically query
e.g.    get_controller_name (uint8_t channel, uint8_t cc_num);
or a fixed-size array of all patches, controllers, note-names...

Comments, thoughts, ideas are welcome!
robin