Proposition : global changes to timidity and patches/soundfonts

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2016, Raphaël Halimi wrote:
> The rationale behind this proposition is that, for now, when timidity
> gets installed as a dependency, it pulls in the venerable (but
> unfortunately incomplete) freepats package, which sadly doesn't offer a
> good musical experience, since quite a bunch of patches are missing or
> sound like a basic electric organ.

Indeed.

> If a user wants better sound on their games or software, he/she has to
> install a new soundfont through apt, *and* hack in
> /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg, which is far from ideal from a newbie's
> point of view.

Agreed.

> What I propose is to:
> 
> - Create a new alternative, named for example "timidity-instruments",
> which would be registered by freepats, fluid-soundfont and
> timgm6mb-soundfont (and maybe other packages providing patches or
> soundfonts), and point it to a timidity configuration file fragment,
> provided in the packages
> - Have those packages declare in their dependencies that they provide
> "timidity-instruments"
> - In /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg, replace the lines about freepats and
> fluid-soundfont to a simple line that includes the configuration file
> fragment pointed by the alternative
> - Declare in timidity's dependencies that it recommends the
> "timidity-instruments" virtual package, and one default real package
> providing it

Maybe timidity-default-* ?

Anyway, I agree with the general idea.

If the others agree, please file a top-level bug report on timidity to track
this, then file subsidiary bugs on each package that needs to be changed,
and make the timidity bug depend on them.

> I had this idea on my mind for a couple of years now (in fact, when I
> discovered OpenTTD and tested a wide range of soundfonts, and got tired
> of having to manually hack timidity's configuration file each time).

Heh.

> I also made, for my personnal use, non-free packages of all the
> soundfonts bundled with the various SoundBlaster cards, from the AWE32
> to the Audigy, using the same alternative system I described here.

I myself use a decades old gravis-ultrasound-style soundbank known as "EAW
patchset" that has since disappeared from the network.  I should compare it
with the complete fluid one sometime...

EAW has license issues, it cannot be distributed, unfortunately.

> I'm using my modified packages for a couple of weeks now on my Sid box,
> without any problem. Switching between soundfonts or freepats is as easy
> as calling "sudo update-alternatives --config timidity-instruments" and
> choose one of the alternatives installed.

Sounds good.  Let's see what the others say.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh