VMPK(1)

💅 VMPK(1) — User Commands ✨

okay so this is the vmpk(1) page, bestie, and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

vmpk — Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard. that's her. that's the whole name. iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

vmpk [options...]

literally just the program name and whatever options you feel like sprinkling on top 💫

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🎹 DESCRIPTION 🎹

So this manual page documents vmpk briefly — like, the sparknotes version, not the whole lore.

This program uses standard Qt options. slay, standard.

Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard is a MIDI events generator and receiver. The way that it's both?? multi-hyphenate queen 👑

Important vibe check though: it doesn't produce any sound by itself. nope, not a single note comes out of her on her own. she's not a synth, she's the ✨middlewoman✨. You use her to drive a MIDI synthesizer — could be hardware, could be software, internal or external, doesn't matter, she's flexible like that 💅

You can use the computer's keyboard to play MIDI notes, and also the mouse. Yes, the actual keyboard keys. Yes, the mouse. Both. We contain multitudes.

And you can use the Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard to display the played MIDI notes coming from another instrument or a MIDI file player — so she's also lowkey a little screen for someone else's performance 🎀

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👑 VMPK OPTIONS 👑

These ones apply to vmpk only — her exclusive little set, no sharing:

• -h|--help — Displays a help text. when in doubt, ask for help, it's giving self-care 💖
• -v|--version — Displays version information. check what era of vmpk you're on ✨
• -p|--portable — Enables portable settings mode using a default configuration file name. very "living out of a suitcase" of her 🧳
• -f path/file.conf — This option implies --portable as well. Reads and writes path/file.conf as the portable settings configuration file name.

And ngl this one's important: this configuration file is always a text file with INI format, despite the running Operating System conventions. So don't come at her with your OS-specific file format assumptions, she said INI and she meant INI 😤

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🌈 STANDARD OPTIONS 🌈

These ones apply to all Qt5/6 applications — so they're not even vmpk's, she's just borrowing them from the whole Qt fam 🫶

• -style= style / -style style — Set the application GUI style. Possible values depend on the system configuration. And if Qt is compiled with additional styles, or has additional styles as plugins, those will be available to the -style command line option too. options within options, we love to see it 💅
• -stylesheet= stylesheet / -stylesheet stylesheet — Set the application styleSheet. The value must be a path to a file that contains the Style Sheet. make it pretty, bestie 🎀
• -widgetcount — Print debug message at the end about number of widgets left undestroyed and maximum number of widgets existed at the same time. lowkey a little forensic audit of your widget situation 🔍
• -reverse — Set the application's layout direction to Qt::RightToLeft. This option is intended to aid debugging and should not be used in production. The default value is automatically detected from the user's locale (see also QLocale::textDirection()). so like... debugging only. do not ship it. I'm serious 🙈
• -platform platformName[:options] — Specify the Qt Platform Abstraction (QPA) plugin.
• -platformpluginpath path — Specify the path to platform plugins.
• -platformtheme platformTheme — Specify the platform theme. aesthetic choices, basically 💜
• -plugin plugin — Specify additional plugins to load. The argument may appear multiple times. load her up, she can take it ✨
• -qwindowgeometry geometry — Specify the window geometry for the main window using the X11-syntax. For example: -qwindowgeometry 100x100+50+50
• -qwindowicon icon — Set the default window icon. her little face in the taskbar 🥺
• -qwindowtitle title — Set the title of the first window.
• -session session — Restore the application from an earlier session. main character resurrection arc 🔥
• -display hostname:screen_number — Switch displays on X11. Overrides the DISPLAY environment variable. she said this screen, not that one.
• -geometry geometry — Specify the window geometry for the main window on X11. For example: -geometry 100x100+50+50
• -dialogs= [xp|none] — Only available for the Windows platform. xp uses native style dialogs and none disables them.
• -fontengine= freetype — Use the FreeType font engine. fonts but make it open source 🦋

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• qt5options (7) — go read this too, she's not doing all the work for you 💖

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📜 LICENSE 📜

This manual page was originally written by Mehdi Dogguy <dogguy@pps.jussieu.fr> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). generous queen 💅

Updated for Qt5/6 by Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <plcl@users.sourceforge.net> — thank you for the modernization, king 👑

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; considering as source code all the file that enable the production of this manpage. yup, that's the whole license deal, copy/paste/modify away 🫶

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🧚 AUTHORS 🧚

• Mehdi Dogguy <dogguy@pps.jussieu.fr>
• Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <plcl@users.sourceforge.net>

the two icons responsible for this masterpiece ✨

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

• Copyright © 2009 Mehdi Dogguy
• Copyright © 2010-2026 Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas

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and that's the page!! 💖 this whole thing is vmpk 0.9.2, dated Jan 6, 2026 — so yeah she's fresh, she's current, she's serving. go make some music bestie, no cap 🌈🎹⭐