GM36 App file manager/editor program

I've started a thread for the File Manager app I'm writing as I keep losing track of the original in the Share Presets thread.  The link at the bottom of this post should take you to the latest version on my Dropbox site.  Just download it and run the single executable from wherever you want to put it.

It's still a work in progress but you should be able to use it now to do the following:

• Validate .GM36 format and .TXT format files to check whether they can be imported correctly into the GM36 App and the File Manager App.  This will allow you to easily spot and correct any mistakes made while editing the files by hand.
  
  
• Open one or a number of .GM36 format and .TXT format files into the Manager App to view the order and names of the voices inside.
  
  
• Compile a new list made up of any that you want.  You can select individual or blocks of voices into a new list, manipulate them into the order you want within that list, edit the settings in each one manually.
  
  
• Write out the new list into a correctly formatted .GM36 or .TXT file so it can be read into the GM36 App.
  
  
• Simple instructions are included in a tab in the left pane though most of it will be obvious and intuitive.
  

I will keep the link below as the main one for downloading the latest version.  Every time I post a new version I will update the link to reflect that.  I would appreciate any feedback you can offer as I am sure there will be issues with modern version of Windows!


There is a version number to enable checking whether you have the most up to date.  This can be found by right clicking on the icon in the top left and choosing "About GM36 File Manager".  If you don't have a Version number in there then the latest version on the link is more up to date.

The latest version is from 16/07/16, Version 1.5

The link:  GM36 File Manager App Download

¨Hi bordonbert
Very exciting project you are working on! I was just getting about loosing oversight over all the many amp and app backups on my ipad and searching the H&K Website for a satisfying solution, sadly enough finding pretty much nothing. So I was very thrilled to find your thread and of course I am ready and willing to participate in extensiv software testing hopefully helping to move this Project forward. My Problem now is the following: while you talk about .GM36 and .TXT formats, I get a files with the extension .gm36memory out of my GM36Remote App and trying to validate or read this file the error "GM36 file Format error - An error has been detected in the file. Error in voice: 0, Field: 1" occurs. Samething if I rename the file to .gm36 or .txt. So maybe I am stupid and blind or got something wrong right from the beginning. I would very much appreciate your help. Please advise. Many thanks and KInd regards.

Hi Abulix, glad you found the little app. Hope we can get it to be of some use to you although it looks as though it may not be the case at the moment.

The error you are getting is first of all not down to the file extension. While you can use the usual file extension filter system when you select "Read File" to look only for ".gm36" or ".txt" files, the system will actually accept any file you point it at. So if you have a file named "patches.gm36memory" you just select "all files" in the Read File dialog filter box and the app will try to open that file. However you have an insurmountable problem with the ".gm36memory" format in that it is a specialist binary format which is iOS only! There is information on this page by Fredo who developed the other more polished app for tablet:

File format thread

Have a look down around Post 24:

I wrote my little app to work only on Windows as I am definitely not an Apple user. You're seeing one of the reasons why in this very problem. Why does Apple need to keep my file contents wrapped up in binary which only the app can read? I also only really wanted it to be able to manage and organise my patches once they were created, I have no need to control the amp from it, and I work every day on Windows based machines. Before loading anything up from a file it does a check on the contents of the file to make sure there are no errors and it will load up accurately. ".gm36" extension files are deliberately only text based so you are able to open them and see their contents very simply with any text editor. if you take your ".gm36memory" file and try to open it up with an Apple equivalent of Notepad you should find it impossible, the file is not arranged as text, it is only purely random numbers in some sort of special binary format not based on ASCII characters. There is nothing we can do about this unless I could come up with the format that it uses and I could maybe write a simple tramslation programme to swap from one format to the other.

All of this is apparent as the app is telling you that you have an error in Voice 0, Field 1. That is right at the very start of the file and it cannot translate even the first few numbers of the file into characters it can recognise so it has not even found the first "[preset]" line which each voice/patch of the list in the ".gm36" file starts with.

Are you able to output the patch list into any other format with the iPad app?

Is there any way someone can get a '.gm36format' file from the iOS app to me? Just try renaming it with a '.txt' extension and see if you can post it in the sticky file swapping thread. It may be too big to get on there as I remember there are size restrictions. If I can get my hands on one I can try playing around to get at it's contents. If I can do that I can maybe translate it to our text format.

Hi bordonbert
thank you very much for your explanations, I will have a look at Fredo's thread. Bad luck for me working with an ipad as well as windows pc.
Attached you will find my factory presets backup file renamed to .txt and in the original format (.gm36memory). I had to zip them as the forum would not accept the files as a valid format.
Kind regards, abulix

Bah. My windows laptop took a dump a while back and I lost a year`s worth of recordings ($2100 to recover it and no guarantee the files will be intact) so I jumped ship to Mac (a decision I have not regretted one bit, FWIW). I`d love to at least take your app for a test drive. I do have my old backup laptop somewhere.....

Hi,

I have some gm36 files that seem to work with the ctrl/gm36 windows software.

I really would like to use your nice little gm36 file manager for some obvious reasons like creating sets as I need them in a quick way.
So, having said this: your guys' programs are cool and complementing each other (if I would be able to use the Android app, it would be awesome, but there seems to be some issues with the version V6.x I am using).

Anyway - coming to the point - I have several gm36 files, but I cannot validate/load any of these into the file manager. It ALWAYS throws me errors - no matter which file i use.

==> Is there a reference gm36 file that is "known good" (for the file manager)??

CHeers,
/T

[Edit] I am using the version in Dropbox "from today" - The latest version is from 26/04/16, Version 1.4 on a Win10 machine
[Edit] I used V2.2 of ctrl/gm36 and exported/saved a file (see attached to this thread)

 For that specific file I get "Error in Voice 1, Field 3"

Many thanks for getting back to me with this one TRT, and brilliant to attach a relevant data file. As soon as I tried it with my own setup it bombed out just as you said it would. I would guess the error message you would have seen is "Error in Voice 1, Field 3". As soon as I opened your file to view in Notepad I could see the issue. It's not a programming error really, it's a wrong assumption on my part when I coded. I assumed that the fields would always be listed in the same order and I trusted teh first order I found in a file spat out elsewhere. And I got that wrong! So the tool is finding "[preset]" first, then "number=" second, then it is expecting to see "name=" as the third field. In your file it finds "modIntensity=" so reports it as an error. If you were to swap the "name=" field into third place it would then move on to the fourth field and report that.

It was an assumption on my part to simplify the structure and processing but it was a poor one based on wrong data. I'm currently rewriting the validation process so it copes with the fields in any order within a voice. This shouldn't take very long and as soon as I have it done I will upload the new version and report it in the thread here. I keep the link in the first post always pointing to the latest version so that will be the best place to pick it up from. It should work properly this time as it has your own data file to test with.

The only other thing which may be an issue is that with Windows 10, (I've never used it nor have any intention to do so for as long as I possibly can), there may be display issues which I can't predict yet. The various windows classes which we use to program are updated with different Wind Versions and they sometimes aren't backwards compatible with software relying on them. On that score you'll have to simply use it and see what happens.

Watch this space.

Ok TRT, I've worked on the errors and it now works at my end with your suipplied file, and hopefully with any other variants we might meet. I should really have done it this way in the first place.

I have updated the file on Dropbox, and the link in the first post in this thread now points to the latest version, use that first post to get it. When you have downloaded and opened it, click on the icon in the top left and select "About...." and you should now see Version 1.5. Can you let me know if it now works without display issues on your Windows 10 setup, that's the next hurdle?

Hi,

does ... work!!

After more than a decade of not-programming I downloaded the MS VS 2014 community edition - just started with the "open file" and cool class/formatter ... took me a while. But compared to my active programming times: GEEH, the UI/Editors are REALLY great now! In my days I needed to look up in the SDK "documentation". When doing kernel/driver stuff: there was nothing (which made me writing a book on that in '98),

THANKS for your VERY QUICK response!!

What about taking the next step and add a "Download to GM36" button?! I can (try) to help there ...

Cheers,
TRT

Hahaha! It's not really a rigourous programming exercise, just a quick and easy tool. Wait until you've played with it and found its limitations.

When you say add a "Download to GM36" button do you mean have the ability to push the file you've created out to the amp? If so we are talking about whole new levels of complexity. You would need to create the communication layers to talk with a MIDI interface virtually from scratch. While the programming side is no surprise to me, I am by no means a MIDI expert, actually very much a dunce. I just relied on the fact that Fredo has already done that in his app. I set up my file of patches as I want then export to file and import the file into his app then I push them out from there. I fugured why invent the wheel when he has done such a great tried and tested job of things already. I know it's a convoluted method but it is doable and relies more on his side of things than my own.