[PD] Pdpedia and random generation

[Jean-Noël Montagné]

>  It would be good to have
>standards on how articles should be formatted and what kind of
>information should be presented.


yes I agree. At the origin in 2006..., I have 
suggested to some french PDers the following 
features:


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* a lexicon-dictionary about objects/externals/abstractions ( Done)

* a category search portal ( one of the most 
important feature for pd newbies ), like in 
Wikipedia portal 
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Catégories 
( to do)

Example of category search: 
PD==>Graphics==>Video==>Live==>Effects==>Blending==> 
pix_add /pix_subtract /pix_diff /pix_composite/ 
pix_multiply/ PDP_blend ( fiction...)

* multilingual structure as Wikipedia ( very 
important for educational uses in the world where 
people will stay with commercial software just 
for this reason ( France for example)) (Done)

future options, when the database will be completed enough:

* tools or wiki tags for visualizing patches ( 
parsing of the patch code to create an image of 
the patch, server side) and downloading text 
patches from PDpedia

* Pdpedia database embedded with PD extended ( 
when completed) for offline consulting

* in PD: a contextual help with access to the 
related pdpedia page (in PD itself or online)


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About the formatting of one page, I have suggested the rubriques:


---------------------

(from the body of the page)

Nature of the element (object/external/abstraction/
Short Definition
Generalities (long definition)
Compatibility ( wich versions of pd)
*
Inlets
Outlets
Arguments
Messages
*
Warnings and incompatibilities
Tricks and alternative ways to do it
Examples ( expanded help file+ other examples 
with pictures), links to video examples
Tutorials on this element, links to videos
Associated objects, related objects
Equivalents in similar open source softwares
*
Author(s) of the object, links
Contributors of this page.



----------

(from the infobox)
name
ultra short description
abbreviation
library
author
developer
release version
release date
dependencies
license
website
programming language
platform (i.e Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux)
operating system (i.e. Windows XP, Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.3, Debian, etc.)
language
data type
distribution (i.e. Pd-vanilla, pd-extended, pure:dyne, etc)
link to the code


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about the work to do on the PDpedia, I have 
suggested to organize PDpedia Parties:

It's a on day or two days fiesta gathering, where PDers decide:
-first : how many objects they will document, and 
wich objects ( 5 per person during 3 hours for 
example)
-then they document individually, in a fiesta 
atmosphère, during a limited amount of time.
-then, they create collective(s) performance(s) in a complete fiesta atmosphere

I have also suggested that all PD teachers should 
give time in their workshops for the students to 
document on PDpedia the object they are 
discovering.


-----------------

Of course, PDpedia is a long term project. There 
are also many initiatives like the great 
FLOSSmanuals, or videopedia to produce tutorials.

Because of the 2500 objects/elements, the PDpedia 
is more on the encyclopedic aspect.
2500 objects and more could be completed in many 
languages in five years, if the community 
understand how politically important is to help 
newbies to use such tools with documentation 
facilities. Documenting is not sometimes very 
sexy, that's why I suggest to organise PDpedia 
parties.

-----------------

and yes, I agree, there is a need for some 
maintainers ( I can not do it at this time), for 
an antispam system with a captcha or similar 
stuff.


JN











>
>2009/3/31 Alexandre Porres <porresgmail.com>:
>  > so we need :someone" to manage the system, ok, but then I see that this
>  > problem is kinda well solved, right?
>  > But how do you all see the writting of articles? Is it growing out well? I
>  > believe "someone" could also direct how things are going, and that a main
>  > team could work on it by fomenting its development and all...
>  > right?
>
>Something like a WikiProject on wikipedia? It would be good to have
>standards on how articles should be formatted and what kind of
>information should be presented. I see there has been some effort to
>generate a standard layout for an article on an object, with inlets,
>outlets, arguments and messages as separate sections; but I can't find
>a good article to serve as an example for how all articles should
>look. The best I can find is:
>http://wiki.puredata.info/en/dac~
>http://wiki.puredata.info/en/metro
>If more articles looked like this, I think pdpedia would be much more useful.
>
>Do we want pdpedia to just be a reference manual of objects, or do we
>also want to include design patterns such as the [pack 0 0 0 0
>0]/[unpack 0 0 0 0 0] idiom mentioned elsethread, tutorials, good
>practices and suchlike?
>