[PD] Pd OS X installer with Iemlib and Zexy

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Dec 12, 2004, at 6:32 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

>
> On Dec 9, 2004, at 8:34 AM, derek holzer wrote:
>
>> Hi Martin,
>>
>> martin pichlmair wrote:
>>
>>>> speaking of this OSX installer, is it just me or are other people  
>>>> really annoyed with the new drop down "help" menu in this version.  
>>>> If you are looking for a specifc file in a folder, like in  
>>>> 5.reference, it takes forever and a day to scroll there!
>>> no it is not just you. on the other hand having a place to find all  
>>> installed objects (if each of them got a help patch) is quite a good  
>>> thing. especially for newbies. it is a sad thing that most help  
>>> patches do not feature a library name otherwise ordering them would  
>>> be easy - there is also no mechanism where it should be stored  
>>> beside doing so in the filename (or directory structure).
>>> so: if you can think of a solution on how it works better you are  
>>> sure welcome to propose it. until then hcs did the best possible.
>>
>> Yes, of course, it is inconvienient that there's no way of knowing  
>> which library the objects come from. This namespace debate is taking  
>> on relgious proportions in some circles. But, the main thing which I  
>> found a PITA was simply that the "help" menu didn't open up a normal  
>> file-browsing window anymore, but tried to make a scrollable dropdown  
>> of all the files there. In which case, I would simply suggest to  
>> return to the older model, which is *slightly* more usable [but not  
>> much ;-) ]
>>
>> OTOH, if the help files were organized into folders [as Zexy, PDP,  
>> GEM and some others sometimes do, albeit inconsistantly in different  
>> cases], it would make the scrolling easier. But if the user doesn't  
>> know which Lib it comes from, it is just as unusable. The other  
>> problem is with paths, which have to be set no matter what installer  
>> is used. For new users, this really creates a lot of confusion!
>>
>> Just thinking about this a bit after two workshops of 12-15 PD  
>> newbies, which are about 75% OSXers with their own laptops, and  
>> having to do new installs with all of them.
>>
>
> This menu is far from ideal, but Apple recently made it so that you  
> can't open a normal file browser if the directory is inside an .app  
> wrapper.  Its a bummer.  Therefore, the cascasing menus.
>
> Organizing by library is a bad idea, I think, since most of the  
> library names have no logical organizing principle except the person  
> who wrote the objects.
>
> I am open to suggestions as to how the Help menu could be done better.  
>  Miller did a kludge using symbolic links to get the old behavior  
> working, but I think it'll be troublesome in the long run, so we  
> should figure something out, hopefully something that applies to all  
> platforms well.
>
> .hc
>
>                                   http://at.or.at/hans/

I forgot to add one thing:  now that Miller has figured out how to get  
the old OS file browser working, it would be quite simple to include  
both the file browser and the cascasing menu on the Help menu.  I'll do  
that with my next release, once 0.38 final is released by Miller.

.hc


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