[PD] pd usability and externals compilation
altern
enrike at altern.org
Fri Oct 22 19:19:53 CEST 2004
hi all
Just wanted to say few things about PD after having spent some days
failing to compile the externals under OSX. I have been sending emails
to the list askign for help as i was unable to do this. There were some
people giving me tips about makefiles etc... but still i havent been
able to do it, but i am getting closer :)
I guess emails like this are everywhre in linux mailing lists but i also
think that they are necessary once in a while not to forget about the
issuet that worries me.
i am able to program on python, javascript and some other scripting
languages, to patch on PD and MAX, and I have no problem using windows -
ok not very complex, but i mean i am used to deal with "mission
impossible" problems since windows has been in the past an endless
source of them -. I was using SuSE linux on my laptop and compiled PD
and some other applications, i configured my winmodem and took me two
days to find out. Now i want to install Ubuntu linux on my new
powerbook. I am not supertechnical person but i dont give up in 2 min
when i have a problem
So I was wondering what does happen with the people that have less
technical knowledge than me for example students (i teach sometimes
multimedia stuff) or musicians with no computing background. My bet is
that probably they would end up using MAX/MSP. I know many musicians
that love to use pd patches that they dont create themselves and they
dont know constructing anything on pd, if they have to spend more that
30 min on seting up the system they will drop PD to use another more
user friendly app like MAX. Some of you might say that then PD is not
for you, but i dont really think this should be this way. I think we
should work to develop a tool tht can be used by savy users but also by
non experience users (of course they would use it in a different way),
some people might want to create very new and complex stuff and PD is
great to do this, but some other may be would just like to use that
amazingly complex patch that the first person created.
Once in a while some MAX user asks in the Pd list how to create an
exacutable of a PD patch, the answer is that you just distribute PD
together with the patch because its free open source. I think this is
very nice idea but if the patch this person is distributing uses an
external and somebody has to spend days searching and asking on mailing
lists how to change the makefile and stuff like this its hardly of any
use for loads of people.
You all know this of course, this is a general problem in the linux
comunity. A musician friend of mine said me that he believes that
musicians using linux spend more time setting up the system than
actually working with it to make music. This is not true but in a way it
is not that wrong if i think about my last 2 weeks (i went crazy too to
set up python + all the libreries i need on my machine). This opinion
gives as well a flavor of his experiences with linux and open source
tools. We should work to change this opinion.
If we really want to introduce all kinds of people to PD we should find
easier ways to set it up, for example the latest drag-and-drop
installation for mac its a good move as it is closer to the way mac
users think, despite that it is inconsistant or not from a technical
pint of view. The only reason for me to keep trying setting the
pd-externals up is that i really belive I must try as hard as possible
to use open source tools. But many others out there dont believe this.
They think open source is a nice idea but they want their work done
eficiently and fast.
my 2 cents on this.
agur bat
--
enrike
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