[Jsynthlib-devel] Re: patchlib file format (was JSL 1.0 and 2.0)

[Bill Z. <wrz...@po...>]

Hey looky, I have two cents too!  Here's my suggestion:

<patchlib>
  <patch synth="CZ" name="fatlottagood">
    <description>sounds like that sound from the song about the people 
.. y'know the one</description>
    <field1>CZ401A</field1>
    <field2>CZ401.SYX</field2>
    <field name="author">Mr. Bill</field>
    <data>
      6238768263917634762873
      7169374619384612387468
      1349061032964912734883
    </data>
  </patch>
  <etc./>
</patch>

We can use <author> or <field name="author"> as the mood strikes us; the 
former requires we update the schema (assuming we maintain a schema at 
all) while the latter allows new fields to be freely introduced.

<data> can be base 16 or 64 or something, and is generated by the Driver 
superclass.  Sub-classes can override and provide a human-readable XML 
element tree if they really want.  The synth's name for the patch would 
be embedded in <data>; whether <patch name> has the same value is optional.

I haven't used banks, but they'd probably look like
  <bank synth=".." name="..">
    <patch name> .. </patch>
  </bank>

A scene might look like:
  <scene name="..">
    <patch synth=".." name=".." location="Internal/04"> .. </patch>
  </scene>

Location is a slash-separated series of tokens that define a slot on the 
synth.  The exact tokens are defined by the synth driver.

Converting from the old format is easy.  It's a serialized object 
stream, right?  We can create a converter that deserializes the file, 
then produces the new object model on command.  (We're renaming 
packages; that counts as a new object model.)  You might look into the 
readResolve method, but I don't think that'll be necessary.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/serialization/spec/input.html#wp5903

Unfortunately, I've no time to code this myself this spring, but I'm 
happy to heckle.  =^p

-Bill