NAME¶
ghostess - graphical DSSI plugin host
SYNOPSIS¶
ghostess [
-debug level] [
-hostname hostname]
[
-projdir projdir] [
-uuid uuid] [
-noauto]
[
-f cfgfile] [
-n] [
-chan c] [
-conf
k v] [
-prog b p] [
-port
p f]
soname[
:label] [
...]
DESCRIPTION¶
ghostess is a DSSI host that listens for MIDI events, delivers them to
DSSI synth plugins, and outputs the resulting audio via JACK.
ghostess
also supports DSSI plugins having audio inputs (effects), LADSPA plugins, and
the use of DSSI-style user interfaces with LADSPA plugins.
ghostess can
host up to 32 plugin instances at one time.
Depending on the compile-time configuration,
ghostess will receive MIDI
events from ALSA, JACK MIDI, or CoreMIDI. Unless otherwise specified by the
-chan option, each plugin instance is sequentially assigned a MIDI
channel, wrapping from 15 (zero-based) back to 0 when necessary. Unless
-noauto is specified, plugin inputs and outputs are connected
sequentially to the available JACK physical input and output ports,
respectively, wrapping back to the first port whenever the available ports are
exhausted.
At startup,
ghostess presents a simple GTK+ user interface. Each plugin
instance is represented in a frame, labeled with the plugin name, and
containing a MIDI activity indicator and a ´UI´ button.
Left-clicking the ´UI´ button will start or hide the plugin's
user interface (UI). Right-clicking the ´UI´ button will
allowing starting, hiding, showing, or terminating the plugin's UI.
The ´Save Configuration...´ option of
ghostess's
´File´ menu allows saving the current configuration of all
plugins to a file. Basically, the file is just a Bourne shell script that can
be used to recreate the configuration.
ghostess comes with a minimal universal DSSI GUI,
ghostess_universal_gui, that can be used with any DSSI or LADSPA
plugin. It does not read RDF files or instantiate the plugin, so it's not as
full-featured as a universal GUI could be, but it does allow for adjusting
DSSI/LADSPA ports, selecting bank and program (for plugins with
select_program()), and sending test notes (for plugins with any of the
run_synth() functions). If ghostess cannot find a UI for a plugin, and the
universal GUI is in the
PATH,
ghostess will launch it.
OPTIONS¶
The following global options are available:
- -debug level
- Sets bitfield flags which determine which debugging information is
printed. The default level of 1 shows errors only, 0 shows nothing,
and -1 shows everything. See ghostess.h for details.
- -hostname hostname
- Sets hostname as the name ghostess uses for itself, for JACK
and ALSA clients and GUI window titles. If a JACK port cannot be created
with that name, the PID is appended.
- -projdir projdir
- Sets the project directory passed to both plugins and UIs to
projdir. The default is none.
- -uuid uuid
- Sets uuid as the UUID used for JACK session management. There is
probably no reason to use this outside of a managed session.
- -noauto
- Disables automatic connection of plugin outputs to JACK physical
outputs.
- -f cfgfile
- Additional configuration will be read from cfgfile, in the same
format as command line options.
For specifying plugin instances,
ghostess uses a '[-
repetition-count] [
options]
soname[:
label]'
format, which may be repeated for multiple instances. The plugin-specific
options are:
- -n
- Specifies the repitition count, or number of instances, of the following
plugin to create, where n is an integer between 1 (the default) and
32.
- -chan c
- Sets the initial MIDI channel for the following plugin instance to
c. Channels are numbered 0 to 15. If the repetition count is more
than one, instances are given sequential channels beginning with c
and wrapping from 15 to 0. The default is for all instances' MIDI channels
to be sequentially numbered, starting from 0.
- -conf k v
- Sets configure item key k and value v for the following
instance. May be repeated for multiple keys.
- -prog b p
- Sets the program change bank b and program p for the
following plugin (numbered from 0).
- -port p f
- Sets the value of port p to floating point number f for the
following plugin. May be repeated for different ports.
- soname
- The name of the DSSI or LADSPA plugin library to load, including the
´.so´ suffix. soname may be an absolute path to the
library file, or just the filename itself, in which case the DSSI search
path is searched (see ENVIRONMENT below).
- label
- The label of the DSSI or LADSPA plugin to load from the library
soname. If this is omitted, the first plugin in the library is
used.
ENVIRONMENT¶
ghostess will search for plugin shared libraries in the directories
specified by the environment variable
DSSI_PATH, which is a
colon-separated list of directories. If
DSSI_PATH is not set, a default
search path of
/usr/lib/dssi,
/usr/local/lib/dssi, and (assuming
the environment variable
HOME is set,)
$HOME/.dssi is used. Note
that while
ghostess may be used to host LADSPA plugins, the environment
variable
LADSPA_PATH is not used to search for them.
EXAMPLES¶
Assuming
DSSI_PATH is correctly set, the command:
$ ghostess hexter.so
will start a single instance of the plugin hexter, listening on MIDI channel 0,
with its output connected to the first JACK physical output port.
The command:
$ ghostess -noauto -chan 2 xsynth-dssi.so -chan 2 xsynth-dssi.so
will start two instances of Xsynth-DSSI, both listening on MIDI channel 2, but
will not automatically connect the plugin outputs to JACK output ports.
The command:
$ ghostess -debug -1 -hostname fuzzy -projdir /tmp/proj -2 -conf load
mypatches -prog 0 4 -port 7 0.45 effects.so:fuzz
will start two instances of the ´fuzz´ plugin within the
effects.so library, using
/tmp/proj as the project directory,
pass configure key ´load´ with value ´mypatches´
to both instances, set bank 0 and program 4, and set port 7 to 0.45. Assuming
it is some sort of effect, the plugins´ inputs and outputs will be
automatically connected to the first JACK physical inputs and outputs. Full
debugging information will be printed, and
fuzzy will be used as the
JACK client name.
AUTHOR¶
ghostess was written by Sean Bolton, who mercilessly mangled code
originally written by Chris Cannam and Steve Harris. This manual page was
adapted by Sean Bolton from the jack-dssi-host manual page originally by Mark
Hymers.