[PD] Cyclone in vanilla?

Andy Farnell padawan12 at obiwannabe.co.uk
Tue Apr 22 17:02:37 CEST 2008


On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:38:25 +0200
Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:


> > Practically, it's looking more and more like I need to drop
> > the wishful thinking that I can write a useful and easy to understand
> > textbook based around vanilla Pd. 
> 
> And instead write an easy-to-understand explanation of how to deal
> with the current situation re. externals, namespaces, nameclashes,
> library-loading and path-settings when your book is about sound design
> first and when a lot of these issues are still in flux? 

Good advice Frank, it helps me think this through. 

The problem is the many examples (you haven't seen even 1/10 of the
book yet :) There are almost 500 pages of detailed sound design examples.

Each is constructed so that the student can build and explore the sound
from practical patches. I've carefully tested and documented every step
of each practical, so even (apparently) small problems like this thing
with [pow~] rock the foundations of everything I've done.

I am torn between trying to provide a solid introduction
to Pd in its current state and just assuming the students can work these
things out for themselves. 

As you can imagine, what I want to avoid is lots of caveats and special
cases. It's very disruptive to the teaching/understanding flow to have to
keep explaining why something doesn't actually work (the way it should) as
given. Especially when the reasons for this are not technical and there's
no good reason for it to be that way.

> I'd rather use
> [expr~] a bit in the book, as your book will definitely outlast the
> current situation (from what I've read so far).

Well, for the fluid models I've had no choice, so [expr~] is already
included along with a quick explanation because there is no [z~].

Unfortunately I've used [pow~] in dozens of other patches and it's 
quite unfeasible to go back and rewrite all of them and the accompanying
text. It would take me weeks, and so I feel (on an emotional level)
quite pissed off because adding [pow~] to vanilla Pd is only a matter
of will and possibly 10 mins work to push it into the next build.


If I'm going to aim this at Millers Pd rather than Extended then I feel
it's only fair to have some movement making these small but vital
improvements to vanilla.


> Note that I also think, the math objects (abs~, pow~ etc.) should be
> part of Pd, and probably symbol2list.

Two of us doesn't make a concensus, but I've got the feeling most would
agree. 

Can we make this a catalyst to get a definite commitment to patch
up vanilla with the missing essentials? I still can't find the 
message, but I'm sure Miller said something about bringing Cyclone
into vanilla.

Can I please ask all the maths heads here to help define what would
constitute a mathematically complete object set for audio signal processing?

Right now my 'missing' list includes [z~], [abs~], [ln~], [log~],
[pow~], [tanh~], [cosh~]

Andy








> 
> Ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                                     _ ______footils.org__
> 
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