Feauture request: ALSA Midi

[lorenzosu]

Currently the Cables only show JACK MIDI
The only (maintained) GUI I know of to connect ALSA MIDI is QJackCtl which lately seems to interfere with Pipewire (and Cable), for example for setting 'quantum'.

As relevant ALSA MIDI applications still exist (Rosegarden, Qtractor, QMidiArp, Yoshimi)... It would be nice to have this feature to centralize connectio management within Cable.

[magillos]

Qjackctl won't work well with PIpewire. Qpwgraph (same dev) and Raysession do support ALSA MIDI.

It would not be a trivial feature to add, and currently I have little understanding of how I could do it.
I would probably have to rely on python-alsa-midi, that is missing from Debian or Arch repositories. Not ideal.

Can't a2jmidid be used to patch ALSA with Jack MIDI? Genuine question, as I'm not sure if that's a practical approach.
Edit: Actually, ALSA MIDI clients should appear in Midi-Bridge node without a need for a2jmidid (Wireplumber uses SPA_NAME_API_ALSA_SEQ_BRIDGE plugin for that). Is that not sufficient?

[lorenzosu]

Thanks for the feedback. I see your point.

Yes a2jmidid and also the pipewire 'Midi Bridge' exist but have their caveats.

I'm wondering if using aconnect (command line) would be too much of a 'dirty' way of doing it, but I think that is virtually 'universal' on any distribution and so very widespread?

[magillos]

I don't think it could be done with aconnect in any sensible way. Very little options, no callbacks...
What are the caveats of using pipewire bridge or a2jmidid? Maybe that could be dealt with.