The discussion between the two gentlemen seems to be about "semantics." 
I think it is laudable if someone wants to use MIDI to control Csound. 
I already have a sequencer that can output MIDI, so I would gladly use
whatever someone came up with, semantics or not.  Does a Csound score
have semantics or is it just a bunch of of numbers?   The score has to
be interpreted somewhere, doesn't it?  So if someone devises a mapping
from MIDI fields to P fields which then get interpreted, isn't that all
we want?   I would be satisfied and pleased, as long as I don't have to
dive into CM again.

Job van Zuijlen

Tobias Kunze wrote:
> 
> > The simplest thing would be to use MIDI semantics but with float values.
> > Thus key 60.5 would be 1/4 tone sharper than C.
> 
> Please don't.
> For the most part, pitch included, MIDI doesn't have semantics.
> It would be wrong, therefore, to equate "60" with "middle-C" or
> a unit increase in keynumbers with one tempered half-step.
> 

In message <379D1458.D8A3D4AE@ibm.net>you write:
>The discussion between the two gentlemen seems to be about "semantics." 
>I think it is laudable if someone wants to use MIDI to control Csound. 
>I already have a sequencer that can output MIDI, so I would gladly use
>whatever someone came up with, semantics or not.  Does a Csound score
>have semantics or is it just a bunch of of numbers?

as tobias and i have pointed out, but i feel i must repeat, the
fundamental problem with MIDI control of Csound is the deep assumption
in a lot of Csound opcodes that voice duration is known.

this kind of assumption is at odds with the way MIDI works, since MIDI
has no concept of duration.

i know that when i sat and thought hard about how to do this in
quasimodo, i made all voices have infinite duration. that is, a voice
plays until its turned off, and no opcode can assume that the total
duration of the voice is known. Removing p3 dependencies has been one
of the trickier aspects of opcode porting to quasimodo, and it is a
big obstacle to easy use of .orc files as quasimodules, because p3
just doesn't exist if the instrument in question is under MIDI
control. there are some beautiful instrument designs out there (hans,
step forward please :), but they can't be easily adapted to real-time
MIDI control because they use p3 in a fundamental way.

so, yes, a Csound score has some semantics, because its very
definition includes a specification of voice duration that is absent
is a MIDI data stream.