[PD] pd <--> maxmsp compatibility

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
volker böhm hat gesagt: // volker böhm wrote:

> i'm still finding out about pd, but in max it's quite easy to include  
> and use a set of externals - not much different than using abstractions.

In principle is easy in Pd as well: Just get the source, compile it
and put it into your search path. However Pd runs on more platforms
than Max/MSP: Windows, Linux, OS-X, various mobile phones etc. and you
have to find a binary for each platform you want to use it on.
Additionally many developers don't have access to all platforms.
Pd-extended includes most externals on the SVN precompiled, so that's
a big help, but you'd still be out of luck when you try to run on some
of the more exotic platforms.

> a few years ago i was very much into "doing everything in max".
> but when i started learning a little java and c, i noticed that a lot  
> of things are way easier to code in an external.

That's of course true - in Pd, the Lua loader is wonderful for this,
as it doesn't require any compilation of your objects.

Anyway for being crossplatform between Max and Pd, externals are
tricky as they make the possible differences in available objects even
bigger than they already are. 

I would recommend to let your student install the Cyclone library,
ideally in a version compiled as a library, so you can use the
[cyclone] library object to import Max patches into Pd. I did this
when porting RTClib and it's a huge help. 

Note that Cyclone includes some Max objects as capitalized names:
[uzi] in Cyclone is called [Uzi] for example. 

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht            Do You RjDj.me?          _ ______footils.org__