[PD] Pd vs. MAX

[Thomas Grill]

> So what do you use the most and why?

When performing live (mostly improvising with musicians) i use Max/MSP
because it gives me the possibility of designing good intuitive user
interfaces without much effort.
PD i currently use only for (often long-running) sound installations and
development work. I normally write my externals (using flext) under Windows
because it has the better development tools compared to the Mac.

> How does the Pd GriPd system compare to the patcher system for creating a
> good GUI inside of MAX/MSP? (AND is it possible in the future to use Pd as
> a signal processor in larger programs created with, for instance Fl/Tck in
> Linux or Visual C++ or Borland in Windows? It would be nice to use the
> processing and programming paradigm of Pd but interact with it via a
> pretty GUI in a larger standalone program.)

Max/MSP can't currently compared to any of the PD GUI systems because it has
much more possibilities. It would be possible though to push PD forward with
only some externals, e.g. a simple lcd object for TCL/TK, which should be
relatively easy to do.
It _is_ possible to use PD embedded in other apps because it's only a shared
library (or can be used as one). I'm currently developing a general
performance system using PD as a faceless kernel.

> How does GEM compare to Jitter?

I can't really comment on that since i don't know GEM very well.