Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard
===========================

This program is a MIDI events generator/receiver. It doesn't produce any sound
by itself, but can be used to drive a MIDI synthesizer (either hardware or
software, internal or external). You can use the computer's keyboard to play
MIDI notes, and also the mouse. You can use the Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard
to display the played MIDI notes from another instrument or MIDI file player.
To do so, connect the other MIDI port to the input port of VMPK.

VMPK has been tested in Linux, Windows and Mac, but maybe you can build it also 
in SGI Irix. If you can compile and test the program in this system, please drop
a mail to the author.

The Virtual Keyboard by Takashi Iway (vkeybd) has been the inspiration for this 
one. It is a wonderful piece of software and has served us well for many years.
Thanks!

VMPK uses a modern GUI framework: Qt4, that gives excellent features and 
performance. RtMIDI provides MIDI input/output features. Both frameworks are
free and platform independent, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.

The alphanumeric keyboard mapping can be configured from inside the program
using the GUI interface, and the settings are stored in XML files. Some maps
for Spanish, German and French keyboard layouts are provided, translated from
the ones provided by VKeybd. Raw keyboard mappings can also be defined,  
translating X11, Windows or Mac keycodes to MIDI notes.

VMPK can send program changes and controllers to a MIDI synth. The definitions 
for different standards and devices can be provided as .INS files, the same 
format used by QTractor and TSE3. It was developed by Cakewalk and used also 
in Sonar.

This software is in a very early alpha stage. See the TODO file for a list of 
pending features. Please feel free to contact the author to ask questions, 
report bugs, and propose new features. 

See http://vmpk.sourceforge.net for more details.

DOWNLOAD

Latest release is available in Sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/files

REQUIREMENTS

You need Qt 4.4 or newer. Install the -devel package for your system, or 
download the open source edition from Nokia:

    http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/

RtMIDI is included in the source package. It uses the ALSA sequencer in Linux, 
WinMM in Windows and CoreMIDI in Mac OSX, which are the native MIDI systems in 
all the supported platforms.

    http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/

The build system is based on CMake. You can download it from:

    http://www.cmake.org
    
You need also the GCC C++ compiler.

    http://gcc.gnu.org
    http://www.mingw.org

Optionally, you can build a Windows setup program using NSIS.
    
    http://nsis.sourceforge.net

INSTALLATION

Download the sources from http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/files
Unpack the sources in your home directory, and change to the unpacked dir.

$ cd vmpk-x.x.x

You can choose between CMake and Qmake to prepare the build system, but qmake is
intended only for testing and development.

$ cmake .
or
$ ccmake .
or
$ qmake

After that, compile the program:

$ make

if the program has been compiled successfully, you can install it:

$ make install

There are more commands available:

$ make uninstall
$ make clean

You can get some compiler optimisation when building the program, but don't 
expect too much improvement. There are two ways. First, using a predefined 
configuration type:

$ cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release 

The CMake "Release" type uses the compiler flags: "-O3 -DNDEBUG". Other 
predefined build types are "Debug", "RelWithDebInfo", and "MinSizeRel".
The second way is to choose the compiler flags yourself:

$ export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -mtune=native -DNDEBUG" 
$ cmake .

You need to find the better CXXFLAGS for your own system.

If you want to install the program at some place other than the default 
(/usr/local) use the following CMake option:
$ cmake . -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr

NOTES FOR LINUX USERS

A man page is included in the source package, ready to be installed and used. 
But if you prefer to generate the man page yourself, the build system can do it 
if you have installed in your system the following packages:
* xsltproc program.
* docbook XSLT stylesheets.

The package names depend on the Linux distribution. For Debian they are:
xsltproc, docbook-xsl and docbook-xml. For openSUSE: libxslt, docbook_4, and 
docbook-xsl-stylesheets.

NOTES FOR WINDOWS USERS

To compile the sources in Windows, you need to download either the .bz2 or .gz 
archive and uncompress it using any utility that supports the format, like 
7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org)

To configure the sources, you need qmake (from Qt4) or CMake. You need to set
the PATH including the directories for Qt4 binaries, MinGW binaries, and also
CMake binaries. The program CMakeSetup.exe is the graphic version of CMake for
Windows.

To use the program in Windows, you need some MIDI synth. It is possible to use  
the "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" that cames with XP, but for better 
performance and quality, you may want to try QSynth/FluidSynth:

    http://qsynth.sourceforge.net

Of course, an external MIDI hardware synth would be an even better approach. 

To connect VMPK to/from other MIDI programs, you need some virtual MIDI cable 
software, like MIDI Yoke, Maple, LoopBe1 or Sony Virtual MIDI Router.

    http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm
    http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html
    http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/dl/dl.aspx?dwnid=77

NOTES FOR MAC OSX USERS

The build system is configured to create an universal binary (x86+ppc) into an 
app bundle. You need the Apple development tools and frameworks, as well 
as the Qt4 SDK from Nokia. Note that VMPK 0.3.x requires the Carbon framework,  
with the corresponding Carbon version of Qt.

To compile VMPK using Makefiles, generated by qmake:

$ qmake vmpk.pro -spec macx-g++
$ make
$ macdeployqt build/vmpk.app

To compile using Makefiles, generated by CMake:

$ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" .
$ make

To create Xcode project files:
$ qmake vmpk.pro -spec macx-xcode
or
$ cmake -G Xcode .

You can use the MIDI synth library that is included in Mac OSX, but a program
is needed to do so, like SimpleSynth (http://notahat.com). Also from the same 
author is MIDI Patchbay. You can use also QSynth for the same price.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to the aforementioned tools, VMPK uses work from the following
open source projects. 

* from Qtractor, by Rui Nuno Capela 
  http://qtractor.sourceforge.net 
  Instrument definition data classes, Shortcuts editor dialog
  
* from QSynth, by Rui Nuno Capela  
  http://qsynth.sourceforge.net
  Knob widget

* Icon and logo by Theresa Knott
  http://openclipart.org/media/files/TheresaKnott/346
  
See AUTHORS for a complete list of acknowledgments  
  
Thank you very much.