[PD] messing with help-patches

Frank Barknecht fbar at footils.org
Mon Aug 21 15:59:39 CEST 2006


Hallo,
Roman Haefeli hat gesagt: // Roman Haefeli wrote:

> On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 08:48 +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> > I don't think the location of the help-patches should be used to get
> > an overview of the objects in a library. There is no direct connection
> > between these two attributes, it would be artificial and error prone
> > to create one IMO. Still for making installation and packaging easier,
> > subdirs for every library have advantages.
> > 
> 
> of course, it would be error prone, but what other way is there to find
> out all the objects of a certain library? i see only two ways: looking
> into the helppatches or visiting the website of the external, if there
> is one (not having the possibility in pd itself to view the content of
> an external is kind of awkward, IMO)

Looking at the help patch will only give you a list of help patches.
Many objects especially abstractions miss help files, while some help
files may not be for single objects (like "otherbinops-help.pd"). 

A better aproach is the class browser in DesireData which I mentioned. 

> > > the only problem i see here, is that one has to add an extra -helppath
> > > for each lib. it would be nice, if that could be avoided by searching
> > > pd/doc/5.reference recursively.
> > 
> > No, this would break a lot of things, especially directory prefixed
> > names like [maxlib/scale].
> 
> i see, although this is only a problem in pd-extended, afaik. that means
> there is no other way than having to add an extra -helppath for each
> external. since the good ol' .pdrc has been considered to be deprecated
> many times , iirc, and i couldn't find a way to add a -helppath through
> the menu, this concept seems to be problematic.

Recursively added help-paths would also break stuff or at least create
confusion on standard Pd. For example, assuming you have a help patch
for maxlib/scale-help.pd and Gem/scale-help.pd. Which one should be
used when you look for help on [scale]?

A solution could be directory namespaces. 

This would work for exmaple if you have a collection of patches in a
directory "netpd" and if you will always use them with the directory
prefix "netpd/". 

So for example your "netpd" directory is in "mystuff", you have
"mystuff/netpd/run.pd" and "mystuff/netpd/run-help.pd" inside which
calls and explains [netpd/run].  Then you add this to
.pdrc/pdsettings: 

 -path mystuff -helppath mystuff

and all is well. Now exchange "mystuff" with "/usr/lib/pd/extra" and
it gets even easier. 

However you won't be able to easily omit the "netpd/"-prefix now and
simply use [run] unless you use pd-extended, because either Pd will
have a hard time finding the correct help file or your help-file will
have problems finding the object it is intended for. Just try it.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__




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