[Topic moved here.]
There are two organ definition file (ODF) formats :
- The Custom Organ Design Module (CODM)'s format, which is specifically designed to be reasonably easy to understand and use (for technical users), and is intended to be user-editable. Its user guide is on the Help menu in Hauptwerk, and we do support users creating and editing CODM ODFs (within reason). There are several third-party editors for it.
- The 'full' organ definition format. That isn't intended to be user-editable, is extremely complex, and it would easily be possible to crash or freeze Hauptwerk (or have all manner of other unintended technical consequences, e.g. with combinations, MIDI, auto-detection, Hauptwerk's component installer, etc.) if done incorrectly, or without a good level of understanding, since effectively it's a complex programming language and Hauptwerk couldn't technically/feasibly validate every possible error condition (indirect infinite loops, etc.). Whilst people can edit full-format ODFs if they wish, I think it's important to be clear that it's entirely at their own risk, and that we don't provide any official support for doing so (except to major sample set producers), apart from providing the relevant documentation upon request to licensed users. We also reserve the right not to provide any support when using Hauptwerk with any ODF that's been edited, given the potential for making things misbehave. I wasn't aware of any editors being available for the full ODF format.
mren wrote:- Would that be considered helpful or is it a complete waste of time?
From our perspective, I'd have some reservations about something being made readily available publicly that might encourage people to break things unintentionally (and severely) and thus risking causing a considerable amount of user problems and resulting support for us (especially given that we wouldn't have any easy/reliable way of knowing whether people had edited an existing ODF, and thus caused other issues indirectly, when contacting us for support).
If you really did want to embark upon it, then I think we'd appreciate it if you made it absolutely clear to users that they could easily break Hauptwerk, and that we won't provide support with any user-edited ODFs.
Of course, if you just wanted to make such a utility for your own use, then there would be no problems with that per-se.
mren wrote:- Is it possible to get a technical specification of the ODF format? This thread suggests so: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15486&p=115914
I've sent you an email accordingly.
mren wrote:This was quite cumbersome because of the quite "verbose" file format and the non-semantic XML tag names.
You need to turn off XML auto-compacting to see the format in a human-comprehensible way. The sample set creator's guide covers that in depth.