[PD] pdpedia test sites Why ?

[ild0012 at londonmet.ac.uk]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 10:54:13AM +0200, JNM wrote:
>
>
>> well there is quite many pd-related sites already, i thought
>>
>> why pdpedia is needed ?
>
>
> As a primo-supporter of the idea in France, let me try to explain. There 
> are main reasons:
>
> 1/ there is no dictionnary or lexicon about the 3000 
> objects/externals/abstraction usable in PD. Most of the ressources about 
> those components are spread over a hundred sites, and help patches are not 
> made to explain all about one component.
>
> 2/ the actual documentation is static. Once made, (most of the time) by the 
> developper and published somewhere on the web, there are few possibilities 
> for the community to correct, complete, translate or improve the quality of 
> this documentation.
>
>  3/ the actual documentation is mainly in English ==> impossible to 
> persuade some schools to use open source software in many countries without 
> localised documentation ( I have seen this case many times in France).

yeah.. i didn't find ANY even just info article in russian ..so i'll try
hard to get something done.... but might take my a while
>
> 4/ most of the coders are not good documenters. Sometimes they don't 
> document ( exept the help patch), because they don't like this work, or 
> because they don't know how to do it clean. The pedagogic aspect of a 
> documentation is important for newbies. As in Wikipedia, everyone should 
> have the possibility to improve one of the 3000 components in a few clicks, 
> and publish it instantaneously to all the community.
>
> 5/ there is no tool to know which object/external/abstraction is available 
> for the use people need for their patch. Learning the 3000 components needs 
> a life or autistic capacities. Pdpedia will have both a category portal and 
> a search engine.

may it can have some search for the puredata.info/Members/* as well,
like an extra section, some stuff there might be helpful, but not for
such a general use ..

>
>
> ------------
>
>
> The pdpedia project is to build a living/open/collective/multilingual 
> encyclopedy about each of the actual 3000 possible components in a PD 
> patch.
> Each page of PDpedia can welcome many rubriques as those we have published 
> here for test last year 
> http://pdpedia.dreamhosters.com/index.php?title=Menu (not completed, and 
> for test only)
>
> Many advantages output from a wikipedia-like process:
>
> -The users can be contributors of the documentation.
> -The users can be translators of the documentation.
> -The pdpedia file can be (automatically) embbeded in each new pd release or 
> nightly build giving the possibility to have a complete doc offline.
> -The pdpedia database can be easily edited in paper or booklets with 
> wikimedia tools.
> -The pdpedia database server engine could in the future "understand" text 
> patches and translate them into images.
> -Reversely, a click on a patch image in your browser could open the patch 
> in PD ?

yeah, the idea of an offline doc collection is great.
it could be cool to conver them in manpage-like format,
and a have little broser embedded in pd ...
>
> and many other possibilities. But for my opinion, the main advantage is 
> that the users collaborate to make the best clear and useful documentation, 
> like in wikipedia.

i might do some docs in russian, once i get few things sorted around it
..
>
> JN
>
> PS. just in case, the pdpedia.org DNS has been bought for one year by our 
> non-profit org last october, and we offer it to PD community if needed. 
> Otherwise, the name will be automatically deleted in one month.
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jean-Noël Montagné
> http://www.artsens.org
> http://www.craslab.org
> http://www.fluxtation.org
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------