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- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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 2.2 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-2.2/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.
-