Re: MIDI title?

[David Kastrup]

James <pkx166h@posteo.net> writes:

> Hello
>
> On 19/11/2021 21:14, Carl Sorensen wrote:
>> I think it's reasonable to use the filename, and if the title in the
>> MIDI needs to be empty, the user can set it so.
>>
>> Carl
>>   
>
> I agree with Carl - for what my opinion is worth.
>
> That seems to me to be the most 'obvious' solution to someone who
> would not have considered this a problem in the first place.

Well, the way I read the MIDI standard there is nothing wrong with
having "" here so it should not have been a problem in the first place.
But it took me a large amount of time to figure out what made my
arrangers refuse playing the MIDI file while displaying a garbage title
here (I tried converting to a type 0 MIDI in vain).  For all that I
know, it's a bug in the arrangers.  At the same time, conveying a title
of "" when it is not requested seems spurious.  A title is not needed in
MIDI as far as I can tell, so the cleanest solution probably would be
not to emit any when none is specified.

I have no idea what my arrangers would display then (maybe they even are
smart enough to fall back to the filename on their own) and the code
appears sort of icky regarding how to implement that behavior so it's
possible that it would entail some work without best payoff for my
particular hardware.

Though I should be easily able to test that case by hardcoding no title
at all in the MIDI and then seeing what happens when I try playing the
file.

Maybe I'll check that first.

-- 
David Kastrup