[PD] Doc/tutorial thoughts from Max/MSP switcher/newbie (long)

[Derek Holzer]

Hi,

the list of objects in the FLOSS Manual is kind of a place-holder right 
now. It needs some help, maybe someone at the upcoming book sprint would 
like to take some charge over the situation ;-)

The Object Thesaurus function you are describing is supposed to be 
handled by the Pdpedia page, however it is a bit "orphaned" right now, 
and tends to collect a lot of spam because of insufficient protections. 
There has been a lot of discussion about what to do with it, and 
hopefully some of that discussion will get realized into action!

best,
Derek

J. Simon van der Walt wrote:
> Seems there's a lot of activity around docs and tutorials in this community
> at the moment. It's great for someone like me, giving Pd another try after a
> couple of years of using Max/MSP. Since I last looked at it, things are much
> improved. Pd-extended is great; all the libraries I'll probably/maybe need
> are packaged away in a .app where I can just forget about them. This is
> market leading as far as I'm concerned; much better than Max/MSP (or heaven
> forbid, SuperCollider!) - for me as a musician/geek (but not a programmer)
> the whole business of trying to figure out which stupid folder some bunch of
> stupid files has to be dropped into just - gets - really - boring.
> 
> On the docs and tutorials front, again I'm finding a lot of great stuff.
> However... just at the moment I'm trying to port one of my favourite max
> patches to Pd and finding it unexpectedly difficult to find the information
> I need. I find I'm missing three really useful things in Max/MSP; in order
> of importance, probably, consistent 'related object' buttons in the help
> patches, the Object Thesaurus, and a complete reference manual.
> 
> Ok, there are 'related object' buttons in many help files, but for some
> reason I can't quite put my finger on, I frequently find myself dead-ended
> in Pd, and not sure where to look for an object which might just do what I
> want.
> 
> This is where an Object Thesaurus would be really great, being able to look
> up objects (including those from extended libraries) by what-they-do
> category. For instance, the other day I was looking to see if there was
> something like the Max/MSP matrix~ and matrixctrl for audio routing. I
> couldn't really see where to start, other than trawling randomly through
> help files and tutorials in the hope of spotting something relevant.
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/PureData/ListofObjects is a good start in this
> direction (although that page is formatting oddly for me at the moment?)
> 
> Finally, of course, a complete reference page on every object...
> 
> nb 1 - of course, for matrix~ I ended up using, er, matrix~ from the cyclone
> library. Still wondering if there is another way, rather than just falling
> back on Max/MSP solutions...
> 
> nb 2 - hope this post comes across as useful feedback from a newish user,
> not carping...
> 

-- 
::: derek holzer ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista ::: 
http://www.vimeo.com/macumbista :::
---Oblique Strategy # 173:
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