> Um, I would hope not.  There's nothing wrong with someone who does have
> serious userland MIDI stuff around wanting /dev/midi to be as
> bare-bones as possible, but still wanting it in the kernel.
There is already /dev/rmidiN for ``raw'' MIDI.  It provides as little
functionality as possible.

> But really, shouldn't this be a separate line discipline for serial
> ports or something?
Huh?  There are many possible MIDI devices that can show up as /dev/[r]midiN.
Serial lines, MIDI ports on sound cards, FM synths on sound cards, 
wavetable synths on sound cards, the PC speaker, software MIDI using
/dev/audio.  The /dev/[r]midi devices present a unified API to all
of these.  I'm not sure how this can be fit into a serial line
discipline?

>   Whatever, /dev/midi seems shortsighted when on some machines
> "any" serial port can do MIDI.  (I think NeXTen are like this, for
> example, not that our NeXT port is all that developed yet.)
I hope it is not shortsighted, I tried to make it as general
as possible to allow many kinds of MIDI hardware.  When it comes
to serial lines I have some ideas how it should work, but nothing has
been implemented yet.

        -- Lennart