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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Nov 23, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

>
> On Nov 23, 2010, at 9:29 AM, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
>
>>> - 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.
>
> We definitely welcome improvements, the problem is that these  
> patches are for 0.42, and the Tcl code in 0.43 has changed  
> immensely.  Hopefully you can port them to 0.43, that would be a  
> necessary step for me to include them.
>
>>> - 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).
>
> Perhaps you'd be interested in my unreleased tkwidgets library, its  
> in SVN.  Basically, I am working on creating a framework to make it  
> much easier to make GUI objects. Part of that framework includes  
> things like resizing things with the mouse.  I have that much  
> working but its buggy still.  Once that gets ironed out, I plan on  
> making Pd versions of all the core Tk widgets, including the Tk  
> canvas.  In tkwdigets there is already a [text] object that works  
> quite nicely, save a few bugs.

I forgot to add, my experience with the iemgui code has told me that  
they would be very difficult to improve, hence the tkwidgets lib.

.hc


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