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revision 854 by schoenebeck, Fri Apr 28 17:51:27 2006 UTC revision 3370 by schoenebeck, Sat Nov 25 01:19:10 2017 UTC
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1    Version 4.1.0 (25 Nov 2017)
2    
3      This release adds support for files much larger than 2 GB for GigaStudio /
4      Gigasampler (.gig), DLS, as well as for RIFF files in general. This file size
5      limitation existed for a very long time due to the RIFF format's historical,
6      internal 32 bit file offsets. To circumvent this file size limitation the
7      concept of so called "extension files" was added in the past to the
8      GigaStudio format, which means that the GigaStudio instrument editor splitted
9      the respective overall instrument file into a set of files (.gig, .gx01,
10      .gx02, ...), each being max. 2 GB in size, and all of them were expected to be
11      located in the same directory for the sampler to load the entire large
12      instrument successfully. libgig always supported only reading such gig
13      extension files, however libgig never supported to create .gig files with
14      extension files, nor did it support modifying existing ones. In this release
15      it was necessary to finally get rid of this overall file size limitation in
16      libgig. Now when that concept of extension files was introduced years ago, it
17      made sense at that point, because there were still many systems out there
18      which still had no support for large files (on either OS or file system
19      level). However today even on low end mobile devices support for large files
20      is already a broad standard. Accordingly instead of adding write support for
21      extension files in libgig, the problem was addressed at its root by
22      transparently using appropriate, automatic file offset sizes. So when writing
23      .gig/DLS/RIFF files smaller than 2 GB there are still 32 bit file offsets
24      being used by libgig. Accordingly such files are still backward compatible
25      with older software. However if the overall file size to be written is 2 GB or
26      larger, then 64 bit file offsets are automatically used by libgig instead.
27      Note though that due to that circumstance such files >= 2 GB are not backward
28      compatible with older versions of libgig, nor could they be loaded with the
29      original GigaStudio software.
30    
31      Another major new feature in this libgig release is the entirely new
32      serialization API (Serialization.h) which provides a powerful and easy way
33      to serialize and deserialize an arbitrary set of native C++ objects into an
34      abstract data stream. Which means you can simply save the entire runtime state
35      of an application to a file or send it as data over "wire" (i.e. over network
36      or to another process) and restore that runtime state from that data there at
37      any time. In contrast to other C++ serialization frameworks out there, this
38      framework provides two major benefits:
39    
40      1. This serialization framework is designed to be very robust regarding
41         potential versioning changes of the native C++ classes being
42         (de)serialized. So even if the C++ classes have seen massive software
43         changes between the point where they were serialized and the point where
44         they are to be deserialized; for example if class member variables of
45         serialized C++ objects were renamed in meantime, or if variable offsets, or
46         variables' data types had been changed, then the deserialization algorithm
47         can still cope with such common software changes automatically in many
48         cases, that is as long as the deserialization algorithm can "guess" what
49         the changes were exactly. If the serialization framework is unable to
50         automatically detect the precise software changes, then it will abort the
51         deserialization task with an exception and an error message stating that
52         the software versions are incompatible.
53    
54      2. This serialization framework supports "partial" deserialization. That
55         means it not only allows to restore an entire runtime state, but it also
56         allows to only restore an arbitrary desired subset of information
57         from the previously serialized data stream, while leaving all other data
58         of the running C++ objects untouched. The serialization framework also
59         incorporates a reflection API which allows applications to implement
60         convenient editors on top of such serialized data, i.e. allowing end users
61         to pick or alter specific information within the serialized data.
62    
63      The new Serialization framework is already embedded into the gig classes of
64      libgig, and it is used as basis for the new powerful macro features in the
65      gigedit instrument editor application. Refer to the release notes of
66      gigedit 1.1.0 for more information about those new macro features in gigedit.
67    
68    Version 4.0.0 (14 Jul 2015)
69    
70      This major release of libgig adds support for other file formats:
71      SoundFont 2 (.sf2), KORG multi sample instruments (.KSF, .KMP) and AKAI
72      format sounds. The AKAI classes are a fork of Sébastien Métrot's libakai and
73      since it is released under a different license (LGPL) than libgig is (GPL),
74      the AKAI classes are built as separate DLL file. All other classes of those
75      new file formats are built and bundled with the existing libgig DLL. Thanks
76      to Grigor Iliev for his work on the SoundFont 2 classes! Please note that
77      there is currently no support for KORG's .PCG file format yet. That's because
78      this file format changes a lot and is not only dependent to the precise KORG
79      keyboard model, but also to the precise OS version on the same model. And
80      since basic conversion can also be done by just accessing the .KSF and .KMP
81      files (sample data, loop informations), the current classes should be
82      sufficient for many tasks. Adding support for KORG's .PCG files is not
83      planned at the moment.
84    
85      Various new command line tools have been added as well to dump, extract and
86      convert between all those file formats now. Each one of it has a man page,
87      so please refer to the respective man page of the individual command line
88      tool for details.
89    
90      The GigaStudio/Gigasampler classes received a load of fixes during the last
91      six years. And support for features introduced with the last official
92      GigaStudio 4 software (RIP) were added, for instance support for so called
93      "iMIDI Rules". Those rules allow i.e. to trigger notes by MIDI CC and to
94      define a sample set for legato playing style. In the meantime it seems as if
95      the GigaStudio software has seen its last version with GigaStudio 4, because
96      Tascam discontinued this product and the intellectual property of GigaStudio
97      had been sold several times between companies. It is currently not possible
98      to buy a new copy of GigaStudio anymore and we personally don't expect that
99      this situation will ever change.
100    
101      Does this also mean the end of new features for libgig? Not really! Actually
102      we already started to add new features to the GigaStudio/Gigasampler format
103      which never existed with the GigaStudio/Gigasampler software: The most
104      noteworthy new feature added by us is support for real-time instrument
105      scripts. These are little "programs" which you can bundle with your .gig
106      sounds to add a custom behavior to your sounds when playing them with i.e.
107      LinuxSampler. Find out more about this new major feature on:
108    
109            http://doc.linuxsampler.org/Instrument_Scripts/
110    
111      There are also some more minor extensions to the .gig format, for example
112      support for far more MIDI CC's than originally allowed by the GigaStudio
113      software. Obviously all those custom extensions will not work with any
114      version of the official GigaStudio software, those new features will only
115      work with a recent version of LinuxSampler and gigedit at the moment.
116    
117      Besides those major changes, a load of convenient methods have been added to
118      the existing libgig classes to reduce the overall effort working with all
119      those file formats with software applications based on libgig.
120    
121    Version 3.3.0 (30 Jul 2009)
122    
123      Partial support for MIDI rules, the rest are just bug fixes.
124    
125    Version 3.2.1 (5 Dec 2007)
126    
127      Just some minor performance optimizations.
128    
129    Version 3.2.0 (14 Oct 2007)
130    
131      This release once again comes with a huge bunch of fixes regarding
132      Gigasampler write support. Instrument files created from scratch with
133      libgig can finally be loaded into the Gigasampler application as well.
134    
135      libgig's home has moved! From now on you can find it on:
136      http://www.linuxsampler.org/libgig/
137      Please update your links and bookmarks!
138    
139    Version 3.1.1 (24 Mar 2007)
140    
141      This is a bugfix release, fixing one important bug regarding gig v3
142      support (custom split points) and a lot of bugs regarding .gig write
143      support. And this is the first official release for the Windows platform.
144    
145    Version 3.1.0 (24 Nov 2006)
146    
147      libgig's home has moved (slightly) from
148      http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/ to
149      http://stud.hs-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libgig/, please update your
150      links and bookmarks! This is due to the recent renaming of the University
151      of Heilbronn, which kindly hosts this and other projects.
152    
153  Version 3.0.0 (28 Apr 2006)  Version 3.0.0 (28 Apr 2006)
154    
155    This is the first release which allows to create new and modify existing    This is the first release which allows to create new and modify existing

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