[PD] PD file format specs?

[Tjeerd Sietsma]

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:05:01 +0200 (CEST), zmoelnig at iem.at said:
> Zitiere Mathieu Bouchard <matju at sympatico.ca>:
> 
> > 
> > On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Tjeerd Sietsma wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm curious what the specifications of the PD file format look like.
> > > Puckette has already posted *something* in 2001 about the connect
> > rules,
> > > and stated that the rest of the specs are undocumented. Is there
> > someone
> > > who has figured out already what the rest of the fileformat means?
> > > Of course it looks quite simple, but I want to make sure there are
> > no
> > > mistakes from my side.
> 
> of course the file-format is quite simplistic.
> the problem is (i guess), that miller refuses to document some things
> because of
> one reason (correct me if i am wrong): as soon as they are documented
> people can
> rely on there behaviour and thus things are kind of frozen. undocumented
> things
> are "likely to change" in the near future, the far future  or never...

Not maintaining backward-compatibility is no reason for not documenting
a
file format. I assume Miller Puckette rather spends his time
programming/
doing his gig instead of writing documentation for the programs he
wrote.
Not only the fileformat is undocumented, but a some objects aren't docu-
mented also.
Fortunately the fileformat isn't too complicated, but it would be nicer
if
one could download the necessary docs somewhere.
-- 
  Tjeerd Sietsma
  tsietsma at fastmail.fm