opt-in usage statistics 'phone home' WAS: [PD-dev] BUG: namespace prefixes broken in 0.40

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Nov 2, 2006, at 2:08 AM, carmen wrote:

> On Thu Nov 02, 2006 at 02:02:52PM +0800, Chris McCormick wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 10:39:50PM -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
>> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>>> I advocate use of consistent syntax all over pd. Consistency is
>>>> more important than minimality. If pd's syntax is too minimal, it
>>>> encourages small syntax hacks that aren't portable to the rest of
>>>> the pd system, such as -y amp(0:100)(0:100).
>>>
>>> That is strange, I hadn't seen that before.  I also have not seen
>>> gridflow before.  I should say, then I am talking about things in
>>> common usage.  There is definitely a lot of stuff shoe-horned into
>>> some of those draw and plot boxes.  I wonder how to make that stuff
>>> work without the new syntax?
>>
>> I would say that datastructures should be considered amongst  
>> things that
>> are "in common usage". It's simply not possible to use datastructures
>> for visualising audio data without the scaling syntax, and I think
>> there's a good reason that Miller made the syntax look like that -
>> it's not possible to do it without some kind of custom syntax like
>> that.
>
> so youre advocating arbitrary microformatting on a per-case basis  
> instead of fixing the pd syntax so its not necessary?
>
> hpoefully i just misread.. how do you generate/parse -y amp(0:100) 
> (0:100) easily. maybe the nonexistent regexp external?
>
>
>  Datastructures are part of the Pd core.
>>
>> Incidentally, I also think this highlights the need for a poll of the
>> Pd list at some point so we can get some idea of what users are using
>> what externals, abstraction sets, libraries, etc. I would love to see
>> the numbers, and it would probably be useful for Miller to see  
>> what is
>> popular about Pd in a quantifiable scientific way.
>
> what about an opt-in usage statistics 'phone home'. initng does  
> this for example.. firefox just does it without even asking..

Funny, I was just thinking about something like that.  It would be  
cool to know how many people are using Pd.  If you code it, I'll  
include it in Pd-extended.  Then maybe it could make it into devel or  
MAIN.

Right now, there have been roughly 17,000 downloads of the last Pd- 
extended release, according to SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php? 
group_id=55736&package_id=76013

I'd like to know how many people use it, and for what.

.hc


>>> I don't quite get the scaling stuff, so I guess its hard to see why
>>> it needs to be done that way.  Perhaps there could be a scaling
>>> standard variable like float x, float y, and float w.  It could  
>>> be an
>>> array of 4 values, or two values, a ratio and offset.
>>
>> I think you should read up on DS some more and try using the scaling
>> yourself.
>>
>>> Another difference between [declare] and data structures/gridflow is
>>> that obstensibly, [declare] will be used everywhere, while DS/GF
>>> would be a special topic.  For special areas, special syntax is
>>> perhaps more excusable than something used everywhere.
>>
>> In my opinion datastructures should stay core to Pd as more and more
>> people create GOP datastructure abstractions for others to use. It's
>> possible to make amazing custom GUIs that will work with vanilla Pd
>> without requiring users to compile/install complicated externals.
>
> is it? that would be great. but i think its currently a pipedream...
>
>>
>
>> Best,
>>
>> Chris, your friendly neighbourhood DS advocate. ;)
>>
>> -------------------
>> chris at mccormick.cx
>> http://mccormick.cx
>>
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>
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