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Topic starter
I would like to learn about text encodings in MIDI.
However the PDF link on this site does not work: SMF Language and Display Extensions (Jun '99) [RP-026]
Anyone got a copy?
Also is it true there is only 4 encodings allowed: JP, LATIN, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE ?
I guess LATIN stands for ANSI. Not sure what JP is for, some Japanese set maybe..
Posted : 10/11/2021 10:45 am
Topic starter
Nevermind.
All the non-ANSI MIDIs I looked at don't adhere to the standard anyway, they are just filled with chars I don't know how to decode.
I gave up.
Posted : 10/11/2021 12:46 pm
I believe UTF8 is the most common encoding in MIDI files regardless of what the specs say.
Posted : 10/11/2021 1:33 pm
Until somebody fixes the specifications area, I guess that here would be the place to share the missing documents. I've attached it.
This issue has been always broken in the specifications. First, the original SMF spec only allowed ASCII so every language other than English and Latin was excluded. Then, the RP26 followed the trend, regulating languages instead of encodings. The result was that nobody cares about it.
Of course, there are SMF/Karaoke files out there using every possible text encoding you may imagine, and players need to figure out which encoding was used or ask to the user. For western languages using Latin alphabet variants, the most practical is UTF-8. But for eastern languages that is not the case.
Maybe you can try your files using this open source program. It tries to decode lyrics from SMF files guessing the encoding with the help of the uchardet library:
https://dmidiplayer.sourceforge.io/
Posted : 10/11/2021 3:56 pm
There's nothing wromg with the download area.
I've just downloaded RP26.
Browser problem?
Posted : 11/11/2021 3:52 am
Topic starter
[quotePost id=11977]There's nothing wromg with the download area.
I've just downloaded RP26.
Browser problem?[/quotePost]
It didn't work for last couple of days. Works again now. 🙂
Posted : 11/11/2021 5:00 am
