> Oh,yeah : anyone care to contribute something on the MIDI to Csound 
> questions ?

Most of this has been already discussed at length several times, i 
believe and people tend to be very fond of their private favourite
tools.  These tools differ greatly with regard to the representation 
used to manipulate midi file data and the amount of control over the 
translation given to the user.  

You will find that virtually all programs manipulate midi file data 
on a texutal basis, which makes it hard, if not impossible to formulate 
the kind of "intelligent" translations you are asking for.  awk, perl 
and shell scripting all falls into this category.  max couldn't even 
deal with midi files last time i checked.

i am not aware of any software other than common music that translates 
midi file data into software objects.  once translated, cm makes it
trivial to change them to csound objects of any kind and write them 
out, given, of course, you are familiar with cm and lisp.

Essentially, you are asking for nothing less than a programmable
conversion utility, so you might as well go with a programming
environment.  


>2. optionally translates pitch-bend, aftertouch, continuous controllers, etc.,
>   to user-definable p-fields
>
>3. translates tempos;
>
>4. allows the user to convert selected tracks and/or measures (so the entire
>   song isn't compiled, to save time).
>
>This seems like a reasonable first wish list.

well, 2. depends obviously how your orchestra is coded.  if you have
instruments
whose sole purpose is to reset global variables, the translation is
trivial, 
but if you have to use the tie-feature it gets more tricky, ie, you'll have
to
program it. 

re 3.: the upcoming version of cm supports tempo objects that may be
written 
out either in logical beat format or translated to real time.  if you have
a 
current binary, i can give you a patch.

4.  trivial in cm


Hope this helps, 

-Tobias

______________________________________________________________________

Tobias Kunze                     tkunze@ccrma.stanford.edu
CCRMA, Stanford University       http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/~tkunze