[PD] call for testers for L2Ork iteration of pd-extended (based on 0.42.x branch)

[Ivica Ico Bukvic]

> - is there a "release program"? are the testers to make sure the
> implementations are working well, or do you still take requests?

Not only requests but also active contributions are very much welcome. Ideally, patches provided would be both pd vanilla and our pd-compatible, so that theoretically everyone can benefit.

> - what is going to happen to all this work, hopefully be integrated in
> pd-van/ext?

I've tried sending over dozen patches upstream over the past year (and there are at least another half-dozen I need to submit). While some have made it into vanilla Pd, many of them haven't. I think partially because most of the core devs are plugging away at 0.43 which for me is a no go as of right now as I need something that is as production-ready and bug-free as possible. Other reasons include possibly the fact that some of the patches may be seen as controversial in terms of how they tackle issues. E.g. scrolling algorithm fundamentally changes how canvas spatial context is being calculated and as such it may take some time to adjust to.

Tldr; While I hope all patches I've submitted do make it upstream, I have no way of knowing. 0.43 will get there and possibly soon but I don't feel comfortable running it yet.

> 
> - will someone put the code to work in all systems? (especially windows)

That someone would have to be someone else than me as I am swamped as it is and quite frankly other OSs are not (and will likely never be) a priority in L2Ork. That said, I will gladly merge whatever improvements I can get in this respect. We've already put a decent amount of work inside pd.tk to allow better separation of Linux from other Oss in terms of customizations but it has not been consistent throughout, so it is a simple matter of tracking those inconsistencies down and adjusting accordingly.

> 
> - will you/your team continue to make improvements here (there are
> really
> lots of things that can be done), or was this a one-off project?

As best as we can. At this point it is mainly me and occasionally I get some student help.

> 
> - is there a feature list, to know how to test the novelties?

I should've done a laundry list of these as I went but somewhere along the road I lost track so honestly I don't know just how many fixes are there. That said, I am quite sure there easily dozens upon dozens of them in this release alone.

> 
> - did you look at vvvv? in an informal presentation here one of their
> developers said that he was inspired by pd, but added lots of details that
> make the user experience much faster and easier, sometimes just by
> implementing small details (let the mouse over an outlet to see the
> values, etc.).

I saw it briefly and I agree there are a lot of options that could be added. I think the important question which ones should be given greatest priority.

e.g. I am right now thinking it would be nice to have resizable cnv just by clicking on its bottom-right corner. Ditto for other visual iemgui objects. Another thing I would really like to see soon is ability to box-select patch cords. Then perhaps an undo doubly-linked list would be nice as well (although not sure how hard this would be).

HTH

Best wishes,

Ico

> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> João