[PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Thu, 3/26/09, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(
> To: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at eds.org>, "Matt Barber" <brbrofsvl at gmail.com>, pd-list at iem.at
> Date: Thursday, March 26, 2009, 3:07 AM
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> 
> > --- On Wed, 3/25/09, Mathieu Bouchard
> <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:
> >> Well, ideally, perhaps... but I think that
> it's
> >> somewhat hard to do. Perhaps more so when teaching
> in French
> >> (or any other language apart from English),
> because then you
> >> have to deal both with the synonyms in French and
> the
> >> synonyms in English at the same time.
> > At least in English, which is all I've taught in,
> it's merely a practical matter of using one consistent
> term instead of using many interchangeably.
> 
> I know, but when using various materials that are using
> various different conventions, or when answering questions
> that have been asked using different words, it's hard to
> keep using the same word over and over. I see myself
> correcting students on the uses of words like objects vs
> classes, but that's not for the same reason at all, as
> this is for resolving the nameclash between
> "object" the synonym of "class" and
> "object" the other meanings of it. Since the
> synonyms for connections are not clashing with much of
> anything else in a significant way (perhaps "line"
> is...) it's not the same reason for correcting speech
> and I'm not quite used to that.
> 
> OTOH, the upside to using words interchangeably is that
> people get used to the synonyms that they will have to use
> in real situations... even if I only accidentally use them.

I'm responding mostly to your use of the term "crash course."  In that context I think it's preferable to restrict terminology so that things like execution order, cold vs. hot inlet, etc. may take precedence.  Getting used to synonyms is a trivial and common task that can be gleaned from looking at a list of synonyms, whereas the other concepts are specific to learning Pd and difficult to grasp.

In fact, if there were a list of synonyms for common features/concepts in Pd, I think it would be as trivial as putting a link on a handout for the student.  Then if people need to search the mailinglist later, they can just go to the list and simply try each possibility until they find what they're looking for.

Is there something like this already?  If not, I can start making one.

-Jonathan


> 
> If I made a tutorial or a set of tutorials, I'd
> probably end up calling it by just one name, but if I'm
> using other people's tutorials together with mine,
> I'm probably not going to search and replace.
> 
> Perhaps it's just that pd-list, pd-dev and #dataflow
> are extreme cases of people coming together with different
> words, and that I don't recall enough the last real
> course I taught... it's been a while.
> 
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> | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal,
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