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Tue Feb 20 16:34:06 2024 UTC (5 weeks, 1 day ago) by schoenebeck
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* Preparations for new release (4.4.1).
1 Version 4.4.1 (20 Feb 2024)
2
3 Maintenance release.
4
5 Fixes build errors with some compilers only. No behaviour change.
6
7 Version 4.4.0 (26 Jan 2024)
8
9 This release introduces a new command line tool 'wav2gig' which allows to
10 automatically create a .gig file from a directory of .wav files. This can
11 safe quite some time when creating a new and large .gig instrument from
12 scratch, as this tool automatically extracts info such as root note, velocity
13 and loop points either from the .wav files themselves (if possible), or from
14 their file names. It comes with a bunch of options to override exact
15 behaviour to whatever the naming scheme of your .wav files are for instance.
16 Refer to the new 'wav2.gig' man page for details.
17
18 A long sitting API issue had been mitigated in this release: the ancient
19 GetFirstFoo() and GetNextFoo() style of methods were always error prone.
20 Those methods are now marked as deprecated and GetFoo(size_t index) or
21 GetFooAt(size_t index) methods were added as reentrant-safe replacement.
22
23 Another important multi-threading issue for applications based on libgig have
24 been addressed on API level: the RIFF::File class now provides a new method
25 SetIOPerThread(bool enable) to activate a transparent mode of separation for
26 file streaming by libgig. By default this feature is off and libgig therefore
27 behaves as in previous releases, which means application threads would
28 concurrently change file I/O positions when accessing libgig file access
29 methods simultaniously, like e.g. streaming audio data from disk or loading or
30 saving any kind of other data from or to the file directly might
31 unintentionally change threads' file I/O positions between each other. By
32 activating this new libgig feature, libgig automatically detects individual
33 threads (as callers of affected libgig methods) and separates the file I/O
34 positions for each application thread automatically, as if each thread had
35 opened the file separately by itself. This feature comes with a slight runtime
36 overhead cost, but has the advantage that it keeps application code simple, as
37 it usually just requires to add only one line of code to make a multi-threaded
38 applications work as expected, while still sharing the same libgig objects and
39 without duplicating data or draining RAM resources.
40
41 The rest of changes are numerous fixes, please refer to ChangeLog for details.
42
43 Version 4.3.0 (9 May 2021)
44
45 From this release on libgig requires at least a C++11 compliant compiler to
46 build from its sources. Another new requirement is the presence of some UUID
47 generating function which must be provided by the underlying OS. Previously
48 the presence of an UUID generating function was optional in libgig for many
49 years. Its absence in the past only meant that you were unable to load your
50 own gig files (e.g. created from scratch with Gigedit by yourself) into
51 Tascam's GigaStudio software, it did not mean though any restriction in
52 conjunction with LinuxSampler in the past. The latter has changed in this
53 release. Without UUIDs in gig files you would now also get misbehaviours
54 even while staying entirely in the Linux eco space, and hence this is now a
55 hard build requirement for libgig.
56
57 Most of the changes in the gig classes in this release are about gig file
58 format extensions used by recent versions of LinuxSampler. For instance you
59 now have much more control over what LFO wave form shall be used (e.g. saw and
60 square, whereas the original GigaStudio was alwas limited to sine only) and
61 other LFO parameters like their start phase. There are also a bunch of new
62 audio filter types available in conjuction with the latest LinuxSampler
63 version, e.g. additional lowpass filter types with 2, 4 and 6 poles,
64 additional highpass filters with 1, 2, 4 and 6 poles, a new bandpass filter
65 with 2 poles and finally also a bandreject filter with 2 poles. Another gig
66 format extension was added concerning NKSP instrument scripts: LinuxSampler's
67 new NKSP "patch" variable type is now supported in this version of libgig.
68 Please refer to the LinuxSampler website for a more detailed explanation about
69 this new NKSP instrument script feature.
70
71 And as always there are a various fixes in this release, foremost sane output
72 compatibility with GigaStudio 3 was broken, so that GigaStudio version might
73 not have accepted gig files changed by you with the prior version of libgig.
74 This issue is now fixed in this release.
75
76 And last but not least the Serialization framework was extended to support now
77 various common C++ STL classes like std::string, std::vector, std::map and
78 std::set out of the box. So no custom code is required aymore to
79 serialize/deserialize such very common native C++ object types, which reduces
80 code complexity for serializing/deserializing complex C++ projects a lot.
81
82 Version 4.2.0 (25 Jul 2019)
83
84 This is a maintenance release with important fixes; especially it fixes
85 issues with gig files in GigaStudio v4 format, however this release also
86 introduces some few new features and additions. Most notably it is now
87 possible to write large gig files splitted over extension files (.gx01,
88 .gx02, ...). Previously it was only possible to read gig files with
89 extension files, but libgig only supported to save large gig files as one
90 single, monolithic gig file. The problem with the latter was that gig
91 files >= 2 GB could only be read by libgig, but could not be loaded with
92 any version of GigaStudio. So this solves that legacy support issue.
93 Apart from that, a bunch of convenience methods have been added.
94
95 Version 4.1.0 (25 Nov 2017)
96
97 This release adds support for files much larger than 2 GB for GigaStudio /
98 Gigasampler (.gig), DLS, as well as for RIFF files in general. This file size
99 limitation existed for a very long time due to the RIFF format's historical,
100 internal 32 bit file offsets. To circumvent this file size limitation the
101 concept of so called "extension files" was added in the past to the
102 GigaStudio format, which means that the GigaStudio instrument editor splitted
103 the respective overall instrument file into a set of files (.gig, .gx01,
104 .gx02, ...), each being max. 2 GB in size, and all of them were expected to be
105 located in the same directory for the sampler to load the entire large
106 instrument successfully. libgig always supported only reading such gig
107 extension files, however libgig never supported to create .gig files with
108 extension files, nor did it support modifying existing ones. In this release
109 it was necessary to finally get rid of this overall file size limitation in
110 libgig. Now when that concept of extension files was introduced years ago, it
111 made sense at that point, because there were still many systems out there
112 which still had no support for large files (on either OS or file system
113 level). However today even on low end mobile devices support for large files
114 is already a broad standard. Accordingly instead of adding write support for
115 extension files in libgig, the problem was addressed at its root by
116 transparently using appropriate, automatic file offset sizes. So when writing
117 .gig/DLS/RIFF files smaller than 2 GB there are still 32 bit file offsets
118 being used by libgig. Accordingly such files are still backward compatible
119 with older software. However if the overall file size to be written is 2 GB or
120 larger, then 64 bit file offsets are automatically used by libgig instead.
121 Note though that due to that circumstance such files >= 2 GB are not backward
122 compatible with older versions of libgig, nor could they be loaded with the
123 original GigaStudio software.
124
125 Another major new feature in this libgig release is the entirely new
126 serialization API (Serialization.h) which provides a powerful and easy way
127 to serialize and deserialize an arbitrary set of native C++ objects into an
128 abstract data stream. Which means you can simply save the entire runtime state
129 of an application to a file or send it as data over "wire" (i.e. over network
130 or to another process) and restore that runtime state from that data there at
131 any time. In contrast to other C++ serialization frameworks out there, this
132 framework provides two major benefits:
133
134 1. This serialization framework is designed to be very robust regarding
135 potential versioning changes of the native C++ classes being
136 (de)serialized. So even if the C++ classes have seen massive software
137 changes between the point where they were serialized and the point where
138 they are to be deserialized; for example if class member variables of
139 serialized C++ objects were renamed in meantime, or if variable offsets, or
140 variables' data types had been changed, then the deserialization algorithm
141 can still cope with such common software changes automatically in many
142 cases, that is as long as the deserialization algorithm can "guess" what
143 the changes were exactly. If the serialization framework is unable to
144 automatically detect the precise software changes, then it will abort the
145 deserialization task with an exception and an error message stating that
146 the software versions are incompatible.
147
148 2. This serialization framework supports "partial" deserialization. That
149 means it not only allows to restore an entire runtime state, but it also
150 allows to only restore an arbitrary desired subset of information
151 from the previously serialized data stream, while leaving all other data
152 of the running C++ objects untouched. The serialization framework also
153 incorporates a reflection API which allows applications to implement
154 convenient editors on top of such serialized data, i.e. allowing end users
155 to pick or alter specific information within the serialized data.
156
157 The new Serialization framework is already embedded into the gig classes of
158 libgig, and it is used as basis for the new powerful macro features in the
159 gigedit instrument editor application. Refer to the release notes of
160 gigedit 1.1.0 for more information about those new macro features in gigedit.
161
162 Version 4.0.0 (14 Jul 2015)
163
164 This major release of libgig adds support for other file formats:
165 SoundFont 2 (.sf2), KORG multi sample instruments (.KSF, .KMP) and AKAI
166 format sounds. The AKAI classes are a fork of S��bastien M��trot's libakai and
167 since it is released under a different license (LGPL) than libgig is (GPL),
168 the AKAI classes are built as separate DLL file. All other classes of those
169 new file formats are built and bundled with the existing libgig DLL. Thanks
170 to Grigor Iliev for his work on the SoundFont 2 classes! Please note that
171 there is currently no support for KORG's .PCG file format yet. That's because
172 this file format changes a lot and is not only dependent to the precise KORG
173 keyboard model, but also to the precise OS version on the same model. And
174 since basic conversion can also be done by just accessing the .KSF and .KMP
175 files (sample data, loop informations), the current classes should be
176 sufficient for many tasks. Adding support for KORG's .PCG files is not
177 planned at the moment.
178
179 Various new command line tools have been added as well to dump, extract and
180 convert between all those file formats now. Each one of it has a man page,
181 so please refer to the respective man page of the individual command line
182 tool for details.
183
184 The GigaStudio/Gigasampler classes received a load of fixes during the last
185 six years. And support for features introduced with the last official
186 GigaStudio 4 software (RIP) were added, for instance support for so called
187 "iMIDI Rules". Those rules allow i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to
188 define a sample set for legato playing style. In the meantime it seems as if
189 the GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4, because
190 Tascam discontinued this product and the intellectual property of GigaStudio
191 had been sold several times between companies. It is currently not possible
192 to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore and we personally don't expect that
193 this situation will ever change.
194
195 Does this also mean the end of new features for libgig? Not really! Actually
196 we already started to add new features to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
197 which never existed with the GigaStudio/Gigasampler software: The most
198 noteworthy new feature added by us is support for real-time instrument
199 scripts. These are little "programs" which you can bundle with your .gig
200 sounds to add a custom behavior to your sounds when playing them with i.e.
201 LinuxSampler. Find out more about this new major feature on:
202
203 http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/
204
205 There are also some more minor extensions to the .gig format, for example
206 support for far more MIDI CC's than originally allowed by the GigaStudio
207 software. Obviously all those custom extensions will not work with any
208 version of the official GigaStudio software, those new features will only
209 work with a recent version of LinuxSampler and gigedit at the moment.
210
211 Besides those major changes, a load of convenient methods have been added to
212 the existing libgig classes to reduce the overall effort working with all
213 those file formats with software applications based on libgig.
214
215 Version 3.3.0 (30 Jul 2009)
216
217 Partial support for MIDI rules, the rest are just bug fixes.
218
219 Version 3.2.1 (5 Dec 2007)
220
221 Just some minor performance optimizations.
222
223 Version 3.2.0 (14 Oct 2007)
224
225 This release once again comes with a huge bunch of fixes regarding
226 Gigasampler write support. Instrument files created from scratch with
227 libgig can finally be loaded into the Gigasampler application as well.
228
229 libgig's home has moved! From now on you can find it on:
230 http://www.linuxsampler.org/libgig/
231 Please update your links and bookmarks!
232
233 Version 3.1.1 (24 Mar 2007)
234
235 This is a bugfix release, fixing one important bug regarding gig v3
236 support (custom split points) and a lot of bugs regarding .gig write
237 support. And this is the first official release for the Windows platform.
238
239 Version 3.1.0 (24 Nov 2006)
240
241 libgig's home has moved (slightly) from
242 http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/ to
243 http://stud.hs-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/, please update your
244 links and bookmarks! This is due to the recent renaming of the University
245 of Heilbronn, which kindly hosts this and other projects.
246
247 Version 3.0.0 (28 Apr 2006)
248
249 This is the first release which allows to create new and modify existing
250 .gig files. Beside that it also includes another bunch of bug fixes and
251 Gigasampler v3 support improvements.

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