WinSDS Beta (alpha?)
				   April 1, 1995

			Eric Moon/kludge@u.washington.edu


  WinSDS is a MIDI sample-dump transfer program that runs under
Windows.  Right now, it's functional -- but just barely.  The sample-
transfer mechanism needs to be rewritten, since the way I'm doing
it now is slow, which causes it to fail on large samples.

  You ought to know that this is the first real Windows program I've
written, so there's probably a lot wrong with it.  Expect bugs (and
please PLEASE report them to me when you find them!)

					OPERATION
					---------
  Hopefully the interface is pretty self-explanatory.  I'll just give
an overview of the controls here.  A lot of the menu options also have
button-counterparts in the main dialog, but some of the buttons/controls
don't have menu counterparts -- terrible design, I know.

SAMPLE/FILE-HANDLING CONTROLS:
------------------------------

File,Load Sample & "Load..." button: This loads a new sample into the
buffer.  Currently, I don't check to see what's already there, so it
will happily overwrite the sample you just spent half an hour
transferring from your sampler.

File,Save Sample & "Save..." button: If a sample is in the buffer, this
will save it.

"Play" button: Plays the sample in the buffer, if you've got a sound
card capable of it.

File,Exit: Exits the program.

SAMPLE/TRANSFER CONTROLS:
-------------------------

Sample,New: At the moment, does nothing.  It'll only be necessary for
stereo sample-transfer-related stuff.

Sample,Send & "Send..." button: If a sample is loaded, this pops up
a dialog to request the sample number to send it as, as well as the
channel to send if the sample has more than one channel and the right
mode is set.

Sample.Receive & "Receive..." button: Requests a sample over the
selected MIDI device and channel.  It allows you to specify the sample
number to request, as well as any multi-channel settings you might
want.

Sample,Abort Transfer & "Abort" button: Halts any transfer currently
in progress.

Sample,Settings: Pops up the "Transfer Settings" dialog, in which you
can set the stereo-transfer mode and send mode (currently, there's
only one send mode, so that control isn't real useful.)

"Loop Mode", "Start", and "End" controls: These let you set looping
parameters, which are transmitted with the sample data.

MIDI CONTROLS:
--------------

MIDI,Note Testor: This pulls up a (very) primitive MIDI test dialog,
from which you can select the note to test and turn it on and off.
Handy for checking which sample to get, among other things.

"Channel" edit box: Selects the MIDI channel to send and receive on.
(Actually, WinSDS doesn't care which MIDI channel sysex data comes
in on.)

"Input port" combo box: Selects the MIDI input device.

"Output port" combo box: Selects the MIDI output device.


					NOTES/BUGS:
					-----------

  There are a couple of weird things about how WinSDS operates.  One
has to do with stereo/multichannel support: when receiving a stereo
sample, you have to do multiple passes.  When "select channel" is
set in the Transfer Settings dialog, you can set which channel
(currently only 0 or 1) you want incoming sample data to go into.
  If the sample requested has the same size as the one in the buffer,
the buffer is *not* wiped before WinSDS starts to receive; this lets
you fill in one channel, then the other.  Eventually I hope to 
automate this, but the method would vary depending on the device you're
transfering from.

  Sample dumps are slow, but a bug somewhere in the transfer code
causes a sample receive to get slower and slower, and finally stop after
long enough (usually about 1000000 samples or so) -- I think I know where
the problem is, but it'll take a lot of work to fix it.  As it is,
WinSDS is useful for transferring small-to-medium samples.

  Again, please please PLEASE report any bugs you find to me!  I'd love
to get WinSDS working well enough to be generally useful, and I think
it's most of the way there.


    Peace -- Eric Moon -- kludge@u.washington.edu -- April 1, 1995