[PD] Re: [PD-dev] GridFlow documentation fundraising.

[David Plans Casal]

Hey,

On 2 Oct 2005, at 21:50, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> I support all documentation efforts, of course, and GridFlow does 
> sound quite useful, but I have to say, you don't need C, C++, or 
> GridFlow to write your own Pd objects.  You can write Pd objects in Pd 
> itself.

Quite true of course; what I should have said is that writing in Ruby 
is easier than C, for objects that would be difficult/impossible to 
write in PD itself, such as those using external libraries, etc.

It is also a uniquely accessible way to teach OO design with regards to 
Puredata externals, even if just to prototype (and then redo in PD 
itself, or a C external for speed, whatever). The point is, if we can 
explain the function of an external by writing it, such as:

#this object is a flow object subclassed from GridFlow's FObject, it 
will be called random_choice, and will have 1 inlet and 1 outlet
GridFlow::FObject.subclass("random_choice",1,1) {
   # we take whatever comes in, and choose either 0 or 1
   def _0_bang
     send_out 0, [0,1][rand.round]
   end
}

Being able to write that in a user's home directory's 
.gridflow_startup, load from ruby console on a running instance of PD, 
and call the object with [random_choice] does a great deal to get an 
'Oh!' moment...

> Looking forward to those docs, so we can sway more Jitter users to the 
> open-source side of Max.

Hey, same here! We're going to fundraise locally through DJ/VJ events 
to raise awareness of alternatives to Jitter and Max, and hopefully 
we'll end up with at the very least, more approachable docs for 
newcomers.

Cheers,

David