[PD] ~/pd or ~/.pd for user's externals directory

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> 
> user-installed files.  Windows and Mac OS X have pretty clear folders 
> for this.  It gets muddy on GNU/Linux if we want the Pd-extended 
> packages not to conflict with user-installed Pd versions, otherwise it 
> should be /usr/local/lib/pd.  Or perhaps it should be:
> 
> ~/pd-externals/
> /usr/local/lib/pd-externals/


is there any special need for both having the same name?

furthermore, just to clarify: if the user wants to install addon 
packages for pd-extended, these should of course install into /usr/lib/pd


let's have a look how other apps handle this.
e.g. mozilla/firefox uses (to my knowledge):
- /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ for system-wide plugins
- ~/.mozilla/plugins

so probably the original idea of using ~/.pd wasn't that bad, though i 
would recommend another directory level, e.g. ~/.pd/extra/

as you can see in mozilla, i am not entirely sure why one would need a 
standardized path where users can install non-packaged externals 
system-wide.
it would be interesting to see, how many people currently are in need 
for such a thing.

finally, i find it more interesting to have a system-wide pdsettings 
(e.g. /etc/pd/pdsettings) which could be read either on top of 
(additional to) the ~/.pdsettings or be included from there.

oh, and (even more unrelated) it would probably be a good idea to split 
different configuration "sections" into different conffiles.
e.g.
  ~/.pd/libraries.settings (for -path and -lib)
  ~/.pd/audio.settings
  ~/.pd/misc.settings
this way one could have the audio.settings system-wide in /etc/pd/ and 
the library settings per-user in ~/.pd/library.settings and you would 
not be overwrite the audio-settings each time you save the path-settings.


mfgsdar
IOhannes