forked from openkylin/gimp
79 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Controlling GIMP with MIDI devices
|
|
How To © 2005 Simon Budig. Licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL.
|
|
|
|
Retrieved from <http://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html>
|
|
by Ari Pollak <ari@debian.org> on 6 Apr 2005.
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
What?
|
|
-----
|
|
|
|
GIMP comes with a module that allows to control it using MIDI devices.
|
|
Currently this is only supported on Linux with either the OSS or the ALSA sound
|
|
drivers. It might work on other platforms as well if there is a way to access
|
|
the raw MIDI stream by opening a device.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enabling the MIDI Module
|
|
------------------------
|
|
|
|
To make the UI of Gimp's MIDI controller visible you need to edit a
|
|
configuration file when the Gimp is not running. Open ~/.gimp-2.6/controllerrc
|
|
in an editor and add the following lines to the end of the file:
|
|
|
|
(GimpControllerInfo "MIDI"
|
|
(enabled yes)
|
|
(debug-events yes)
|
|
(controller "ControllerMidi"
|
|
(device "alsa")
|
|
(channel -1))
|
|
(mapping))
|
|
|
|
Then start the GIMP from a shell (so that you can see textual output we need
|
|
later), open the preferences, go to the "Input Controllers" page in the "Input
|
|
Devices" section and select the newly appeared "MIDI" Tab.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Configuring the MIDI Source
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
ALSA:
|
|
Enter "alsa" in the "Device" entry in the configuration. Gimp then sets up an
|
|
Alsa-Output-Port (check with "aconnect -lo"). You can then use your preferred
|
|
tool to configure Alsa to connect a MIDI source to the GIMP. When your MIDI
|
|
device e.g. provides an Input-Port 72:0 and Gimp provides the Output-Port 128:0
|
|
you can connect the two Ports with "aconnect 72:0 128:0".
|
|
|
|
OSS:
|
|
The Open Sound System provides a device file for the raw MIDI events. You need
|
|
to enter the name of this device file into the "Device" entry in the
|
|
configuration (e.g. "/dev/midi00").
|
|
|
|
The MIDI channel:
|
|
Each MIDI source sends events on a specific "Channel" (0 to 15, sometimes also
|
|
referred as 1 to 16). You can configure if Gimp should listen to all channels
|
|
(-1) or to just a specific channel.
|
|
|
|
If your MIDI setup works correctly and the "Dump events from this controller"
|
|
is enabled as well as "Enable this controller" you should see some text
|
|
scrolling by when you hit some keys or turn some controllers on your midi
|
|
device, describing the Event that just happened.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Assigning Actions to Events
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
You can now use this information to map MIDI Events to Actions in the Gimp. At
|
|
the bottom of the configuration page is a list with all events that Gimp can
|
|
recognize. Scroll to the event that you want to assign an action to and
|
|
doubleclick its entry. Then select an Action from the dialog that pops up and
|
|
doubleclick its entry. Now this action gets invoked when the specific MIDI
|
|
event happens.
|
|
|
|
Please note that some actions fit perfectly to some MIDI Events: Actions like
|
|
"context-background-blue-set" can immediately use the numerical value provided
|
|
by midi controller events.
|
|
|
|
Have fun.
|