[PD] PD usability

Frank Barknecht fbar at footils.org
Thu Feb 13 00:21:32 CET 2003


Hallo,
mark hat gesagt: // mark wrote:

> IF we want PD to be used outside of the hobbiest community then it
> does need serious work on things like installing,look and feel,
> documentation and configuration (midi,soundports etc). For most
> casual users these things are not easy or perhaps present to high an
> entry cost. 
> 
> However for all of us these things are not a problem (otherwise we
> wouldn't be here). 
> 
> So the question is - Do we want a wider audience? Judging by the
> responses to this discussion I would say the answer is no - no one
> here is prepared to do the (lets face it fairly dull) work of making
> this a proper product. 
> 
> If *you* (whoever you are) want it to be a proper product you will
> have to do the work yourself or convince someone else to do so. The
> rest of us have a tool which meets our needs.

I'm a fairly experienced Linux user with several years of using this
OS. Still I'm very much a casual user if it comes to compiling stuff.
I'd rather install a binary/distribution package instead of compiling
from source, except when I *want* to compile because I want to change
or adapt software at source level. But I will never compile a thing
like Open Office.

So a lot of the things you said make life easier for users *and* the
developers as well. For example the CVS repository on SF is one really
great things, because it has made installing externals a breeze, and
if you're a Debian user, it is even easier because of the
pd-externals, pd-foobar packages on debian.org

For a Debian user, installing Pd and most of the externals is only a
single command away. Having binary packages of the externals for other
OSes is only a question of time. And Adam's work shows (I think) that
installing Pd on OS-X can be made easy as well.

Another thing might be the level of support this community can give.
This is not the max-msp community and there isn't an enterprise build
on Pd. 

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__




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