[PD] pd-ext documentation [was something else]

[João Pais]

> (maybe this is of general interest for pd users?) speaking of lists, I
> once did a similar thing some years ago, collecting 2682 objects. the
> list is far away from being complete or up to date...
> http://www.parasitaere-kapazitaeten.net/files/GENERAL_ALL.csv_.txt

I already made my one available several times on the list - whenever the  
question "how many objects are in pd-ext" comes -, but probably it wasn't  
that popular.
2682 objects? when I check the properties of the extra folder (windows), I  
get 2666 files - bear in mind that there are several repeatitions (many  
objects are repeated in flatspace), and other files aren just secondary  
material, and some objects don't work. did you sort out repetitions or  
something?

how did you extract this list? I'm willing to (try to) put some effort in  
having a process that documents pd-ext efficiently, and that could run as  
automatized as possible. here is also something I wrote some days ago to  
HC:

About the documentation: I don't have much time (or mood) these days to  
get back to updating the 0.INTRO file, but I've been listing some ideas to  
automatise this task. In case you don't remember, some time ago I did the  
attached excel file - afaik, it is the most complete pd-ext object list so  
far. But it was done by hand - open helpfile, copy-paste, etc.
My idea was to make a script that scans the extra folder, extracts the  
file names and groups them into the existing categories (math, glue, etc),  
and also lists the folder where they are - like the format of the file you  
see there. But what would be quite useful would be a kind of meta-tag  
where the one-sentence explanation of each object is - it's quite a work  
to copy-paste all those sentences by hand, and it isn't possibe to  
automatically search pd files for the right comments. What do you think it  
would be the best way to automatise this? I see these possibilities:
- each developer (or the help-file maintainer) makes his own list of  
objects/explanations in a .txt file (some people done it already)
- the developer (or the help-file maintainer) puts a comment in the  
helpfile of the object that gets grepd - is it possible to add ##-comments  
in the pd syntax?
- in the help patch each explanation has a special string that allows grep  
to extract it automatically? like "[prepent]:: is a shortcut for [list  
prepend]--[list trim]" instead of "[prepent] is a shortcut for [list  
prepend]--[list trim]" (string was ::) this one could be the most  
effective, but I don't like it because it makes all developers use the  
same format.
- HC suggested to take the info from the pdpedia - which would make sure  
that pdpedia stays more actualized. I guess that's what you did, but I  
don't know how to do it.

One other thing are the object categories: they worked good for pd-van,  
but in pd-ext there are too many objects, so more categories would be  
necessary: lists, filters~, generators~, etc. I would propose to increase  
the number of categories, but that should be talked in the community (and  
have the blessing of the pope).