[PD] pdpedia test sites Why ?

[JNM]

>well there is quite many pd-related sites already, i thought
>
>why pdpedia is needed ?


As a primo-supporter of the idea in France, let 
me try to explain. There are main reasons:

1/ there is no dictionnary or lexicon about the 
3000 objects/externals/abstraction usable in PD. 
Most of the ressources about those components are 
spread over a hundred sites, and help patches are 
not made to explain all about one component.

2/ the actual documentation is static. Once made, 
(most of the time) by the developper and 
published somewhere on the web, there are few 
possibilities for the community to correct, 
complete, translate or improve the quality of 
this documentation.

  3/ the actual documentation is mainly in English 
==> impossible to persuade some schools to use 
open source software in many countries without 
localised documentation ( I have seen this case 
many times in France).

4/ most of the coders are not good documenters. 
Sometimes they don't document ( exept the help 
patch), because they don't like this work, or 
because they don't know how to do it clean. The 
pedagogic aspect of a documentation is important 
for newbies. As in Wikipedia, everyone should 
have the possibility to improve one of the 3000 
components in a few clicks, and publish it 
instantaneously to all the community.

5/ there is no tool to know which 
object/external/abstraction is available for the 
use people need for their patch. Learning the 
3000 components needs a life or autistic 
capacities. Pdpedia will have both a category 
portal and a search engine.


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The pdpedia project is to build a 
living/open/collective/multilingual encyclopedy 
about each of the actual 3000 possible components 
in a PD patch.
Each page of PDpedia can welcome many rubriques 
as those we have published here for test last 
year 
http://pdpedia.dreamhosters.com/index.php?title=Menu 
(not completed, and for test only)

Many advantages output from a wikipedia-like process:

-The users can be contributors of the documentation.
-The users can be translators of the documentation.
-The pdpedia file can be (automatically) embbeded 
in each new pd release or nightly build giving 
the possibility to have a complete doc offline.
-The pdpedia database can be easily edited in 
paper or booklets with wikimedia tools.
-The pdpedia database server engine could in the 
future "understand" text patches and translate 
them into images.
-Reversely, a click on a patch image in your 
browser could open the patch in PD ?

and many other possibilities. But for my opinion, 
the main advantage is that the users collaborate 
to make the best clear and useful documentation, 
like in wikipedia.

JN

PS. just in case, the pdpedia.org DNS has been 
bought for one year by our non-profit org last 
october, and we offer it to PD community if 
needed. Otherwise, the name will be automatically 
deleted in one month.
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Jean-Noël Montagné
http://www.artsens.org
http://www.craslab.org
http://www.fluxtation.org

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