Pd on DS [was: Re: [PD] MOD Trackers ]

[Chris McCormick]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 11:14:33AM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
> Chris McCormick hat gesagt: // Chris McCormick wrote:
> 
> > Your wish is almost granted. I've ported PDa to the GP2X (and sent the
> > patch to GÜnter) so a DSLinux port could happen quite soon - i.e. They
> > both have the same CPU and I am working on it. It will be soooo cool to
> > have all yr Pd patches in your pocket to whip out at parties for a bit
> > of real-time joystick-controlled generative dance music. ;)
> 
> Yes, that's really good news. If you need testers, I'm in for it. The
> advantage of using a DS is of course the touchscreen, which the GP2X
> lacks. So far DSLinux misses a really working (nano-)X and tcl/tk. 

Yeah, the touchscreen would be _really_ cool. I am not optimistic
about a solution involving X and tcl/tk since i think the resource
requirements would be too much to run Pd as well. I think something
more feasible might be to make a separate GUI app like in iPodPd. This
would require some kernel hacking on DSLinux to introduce a 'touchpad'
mode as well as the mouse/keyboard modes present in there now. I have
not even talked to any of the developers about that yet, but it's a long
term plan of mine. In the short term, getting an ncurses based control
(with the gamepad controls) and a working DS-PDa in no-gui mode should
not be too difficult. Will let you know if I make any progress on that. I
believe the microphone doesn't work yet though, so it can't be used as
a little guitar FX unit just yet.

On the GP2X I have Pd running in no-gui mode and am in the process of
writing a python/pygame frontend which basically does what iPodPd gui
frontend does. It will parse Pd files looking for GUI elements and then
make it's own versions, controllable by the gamepad controls, so no
tcl/tk or X is needed there too. So far I have Pd's toggle, numberbox,
and comments implemented. I am a huge fan of gamepad controlled music
interfaces (fijuu!) so I'm really keen to get this working and that's
where most of my efforts are focussed at the moment.

I don't have an ETA for any of this. :/

Best,

Chris.

-------------------
chris at mccormick.cx
http://mccormick.cx