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Revision 3524 - (hide annotations) (download)
Thu Jul 25 10:52:10 2019 UTC (4 years, 9 months ago) by schoenebeck
File size: 9839 byte(s)
* Preparations for new release (libgig 4.2.0).

1 schoenebeck 3524 Version 4.2.0 (25 Jul 2019)
2    
3     This is a maintenance release with important fixes; especially it fixes
4     issues with gig files in GigaStudio v4 format, however this release also
5     introduces some few new features and additions. Most notably it is now
6     possible to write large gig files splitted over extension files (.gx01,
7     .gx02, ...). Previously it was only possible to read gig files with
8     extension files, but libgig only supported to save large gig files as one
9     single, monolithic gig file. The problem with the latter was that gig
10     files >= 2 GB could only be read by libgig, but could not be loaded with
11     any version of GigaStudio. So this solves that legacy support issue.
12     Apart from that, a bunch of convenience methods have been added.
13    
14 schoenebeck 3370 Version 4.1.0 (25 Nov 2017)
15    
16     This release adds support for files much larger than 2 GB for GigaStudio /
17     Gigasampler (.gig), DLS, as well as for RIFF files in general. This file size
18     limitation existed for a very long time due to the RIFF format's historical,
19     internal 32 bit file offsets. To circumvent this file size limitation the
20     concept of so called "extension files" was added in the past to the
21     GigaStudio format, which means that the GigaStudio instrument editor splitted
22     the respective overall instrument file into a set of files (.gig, .gx01,
23     .gx02, ...), each being max. 2 GB in size, and all of them were expected to be
24     located in the same directory for the sampler to load the entire large
25     instrument successfully. libgig always supported only reading such gig
26     extension files, however libgig never supported to create .gig files with
27     extension files, nor did it support modifying existing ones. In this release
28     it was necessary to finally get rid of this overall file size limitation in
29     libgig. Now when that concept of extension files was introduced years ago, it
30     made sense at that point, because there were still many systems out there
31     which still had no support for large files (on either OS or file system
32     level). However today even on low end mobile devices support for large files
33     is already a broad standard. Accordingly instead of adding write support for
34     extension files in libgig, the problem was addressed at its root by
35     transparently using appropriate, automatic file offset sizes. So when writing
36     .gig/DLS/RIFF files smaller than 2 GB there are still 32 bit file offsets
37     being used by libgig. Accordingly such files are still backward compatible
38     with older software. However if the overall file size to be written is 2 GB or
39     larger, then 64 bit file offsets are automatically used by libgig instead.
40     Note though that due to that circumstance such files >= 2 GB are not backward
41     compatible with older versions of libgig, nor could they be loaded with the
42     original GigaStudio software.
43    
44     Another major new feature in this libgig release is the entirely new
45     serialization API (Serialization.h) which provides a powerful and easy way
46     to serialize and deserialize an arbitrary set of native C++ objects into an
47     abstract data stream. Which means you can simply save the entire runtime state
48     of an application to a file or send it as data over "wire" (i.e. over network
49     or to another process) and restore that runtime state from that data there at
50     any time. In contrast to other C++ serialization frameworks out there, this
51     framework provides two major benefits:
52    
53     1. This serialization framework is designed to be very robust regarding
54     potential versioning changes of the native C++ classes being
55     (de)serialized. So even if the C++ classes have seen massive software
56     changes between the point where they were serialized and the point where
57     they are to be deserialized; for example if class member variables of
58     serialized C++ objects were renamed in meantime, or if variable offsets, or
59     variables' data types had been changed, then the deserialization algorithm
60     can still cope with such common software changes automatically in many
61     cases, that is as long as the deserialization algorithm can "guess" what
62     the changes were exactly. If the serialization framework is unable to
63     automatically detect the precise software changes, then it will abort the
64     deserialization task with an exception and an error message stating that
65     the software versions are incompatible.
66    
67     2. This serialization framework supports "partial" deserialization. That
68     means it not only allows to restore an entire runtime state, but it also
69     allows to only restore an arbitrary desired subset of information
70     from the previously serialized data stream, while leaving all other data
71     of the running C++ objects untouched. The serialization framework also
72     incorporates a reflection API which allows applications to implement
73     convenient editors on top of such serialized data, i.e. allowing end users
74     to pick or alter specific information within the serialized data.
75    
76     The new Serialization framework is already embedded into the gig classes of
77     libgig, and it is used as basis for the new powerful macro features in the
78     gigedit instrument editor application. Refer to the release notes of
79     gigedit 1.1.0 for more information about those new macro features in gigedit.
80    
81 schoenebeck 2785 Version 4.0.0 (14 Jul 2015)
82    
83     This major release of libgig adds support for other file formats:
84     SoundFont 2 (.sf2), KORG multi sample instruments (.KSF, .KMP) and AKAI
85     format sounds. The AKAI classes are a fork of S�bastien M�trot's libakai and
86     since it is released under a different license (LGPL) than libgig is (GPL),
87     the AKAI classes are built as separate DLL file. All other classes of those
88     new file formats are built and bundled with the existing libgig DLL. Thanks
89     to Grigor Iliev for his work on the SoundFont 2 classes! Please note that
90     there is currently no support for KORG's .PCG file format yet. That's because
91     this file format changes a lot and is not only dependent to the precise KORG
92     keyboard model, but also to the precise OS version on the same model. And
93     since basic conversion can also be done by just accessing the .KSF and .KMP
94     files (sample data, loop informations), the current classes should be
95     sufficient for many tasks. Adding support for KORG's .PCG files is not
96     planned at the moment.
97    
98     Various new command line tools have been added as well to dump, extract and
99     convert between all those file formats now. Each one of it has a man page,
100     so please refer to the respective man page of the individual command line
101     tool for details.
102    
103     The GigaStudio/Gigasampler classes received a load of fixes during the last
104     six years. And support for features introduced with the last official
105     GigaStudio 4 software (RIP) were added, for instance support for so called
106     "iMIDI Rules". Those rules allow i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to
107     define a sample set for legato playing style. In the meantime it seems as if
108     the GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4, because
109     Tascam discontinued this product and the intellectual property of GigaStudio
110     had been sold several times between companies. It is currently not possible
111     to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore and we personally don't expect that
112     this situation will ever change.
113    
114     Does this also mean the end of new features for libgig? Not really! Actually
115     we already started to add new features to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
116     which never existed with the GigaStudio/Gigasampler software: The most
117     noteworthy new feature added by us is support for real-time instrument
118     scripts. These are little "programs" which you can bundle with your .gig
119     sounds to add a custom behavior to your sounds when playing them with i.e.
120     LinuxSampler. Find out more about this new major feature on:
121    
122     http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/
123    
124     There are also some more minor extensions to the .gig format, for example
125     support for far more MIDI CC's than originally allowed by the GigaStudio
126     software. Obviously all those custom extensions will not work with any
127     version of the official GigaStudio software, those new features will only
128     work with a recent version of LinuxSampler and gigedit at the moment.
129    
130     Besides those major changes, a load of convenient methods have been added to
131     the existing libgig classes to reduce the overall effort working with all
132     those file formats with software applications based on libgig.
133    
134 schoenebeck 1953 Version 3.3.0 (30 Jul 2009)
135    
136     Partial support for MIDI rules, the rest are just bug fixes.
137    
138 schoenebeck 1549 Version 3.2.1 (5 Dec 2007)
139    
140     Just some minor performance optimizations.
141    
142 schoenebeck 1416 Version 3.2.0 (14 Oct 2007)
143 schoenebeck 1406
144 schoenebeck 1416 This release once again comes with a huge bunch of fixes regarding
145     Gigasampler write support. Instrument files created from scratch with
146     libgig can finally be loaded into the Gigasampler application as well.
147    
148 schoenebeck 1406 libgig's home has moved! From now on you can find it on:
149     http://www.linuxsampler.org/libgig/
150     Please update your links and bookmarks!
151    
152 schoenebeck 1116 Version 3.1.1 (24 Mar 2007)
153    
154     This is a bugfix release, fixing one important bug regarding gig v3
155     support (custom split points) and a lot of bugs regarding .gig write
156     support. And this is the first official release for the Windows platform.
157    
158 schoenebeck 933 Version 3.1.0 (24 Nov 2006)
159 schoenebeck 860
160     libgig's home has moved (slightly) from
161     http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/ to
162     http://stud.hs-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/, please update your
163     links and bookmarks! This is due to the recent renaming of the University
164     of Heilbronn, which kindly hosts this and other projects.
165    
166 schoenebeck 854 Version 3.0.0 (28 Apr 2006)
167    
168     This is the first release which allows to create new and modify existing
169     .gig files. Beside that it also includes another bunch of bug fixes and
170     Gigasampler v3 support improvements.

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