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

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Fri Apr 3 23:03:58 CEST 2009


Welcome (back) to Pd! :-)  I have two quick responses:

- pdpedia is useful for searching for objects based on keywords: http://wiki.puredata.info/en/

- as for the help patches that are lacking, feel free to fix them up  
and submit them to the patch tracker, then we can add them.  There are  
2000+ objects included in Pd-extended, so there is a lot of work to  
document them all.

http://puredata.info/dev/patchtracker

.hc


On Apr 3, 2009, at 4:13 AM, 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...
>
> -- 
> J. Simon van der Walt    -----     Composer
> <http://www.jsimonvanderwalt.com>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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