[PD] a few beginner's questions

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, robbert van hulzen wrote:

> i don't think the list would have to be a lot friendlier, and splitting 
> things into beginners and überusers would not make me happy. i've been 
> lurking on the list for a while now, learning lots, enjoying the 
> different angles, and happily skipping things that are too far over my 
> head. [...] on to the real reason for my post.

That sounded like a good reason for posting already.

> then i was wondering whether there is a way to add more startup paths 
> without using the -path flag, simply to keep things a bit tidy.

If you mean using .pdsettings on Linux, then no, this is currently not 
tidier in any way. You can't handle more than 10 paths from the GUI and 
you have to keep track of how many paths you have, give them all unique 
names in a sequence (path1 path2 path3...), and then tell Pd again how 
many paths there are because it can't figure it out. In some versions of 
OSX you'll have this same thing as 
~/Library/Preferences/puredata.org.plist which will be a XML file if 
you're lucky, and if not, it will be a "binary" (non-text) file that is 
associated with OmniOutliner, which you'll have to learn a bit in order to 
be able to give pd the same hand-holding as in .pdsettings; I might have 
been told that OmniOutliner as bundled with OSX is a limited evaluation 
copy that may or may not expire but I didn't verify that. In Microsoft 
operating systems, you'll have to use REGEDIT.EXE in a very similar way.

That's my reasons to say that .pdrc is still the main, unchallenged way to 
configure pd (together with .BAT files on Microsoft). All other ways ought 
to be deprecated, especially as Pd Extended clearly blows the limits of it 
two-or-three-fold.

> i had some trouble adding paths to the flag,

technically, a flag is an option that doesn't take an argument. The -path 
option may be called a repeatable option or something, but not a flag.

> looking at other patches, thinking lots, and finding / using the 
> tutorials that will explain what i need. which usually gets me to learn 
> about other things too. kind of circular learning (?).

As long as this is not a parallel with circular breathing (an oxygen 
deprivation technique) or circular reasoning (a logic deprivation 
technique) then I'm fine with it. :)

Maybe you want to say "hyperlearning" as in hypertext, somewhat like what 
you get when you let yourself loose on Wikipedia, Everything2, or the 
whole www, and that you have 94 tabs open at the same time and have 
difficulty closing them because most of them are still unread and you 
insist on reading them all before going to a party that started two hours 
ago. In the process of reading the remaining ones you try to resist the 
temptation of opening more but alas, ... whatever, been there, done that. 
;-)

  _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada