[PD] Pdpedia and random generation

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

I don't think that pdpedia is a replacement or substitute for  
interactive help patches.  But mediawiki is a great tool for getting  
lots of bits of information from a lot of people.  So I think that  
pdpedia could be used as a place to orgnanize content, like reference  
info, links to related algorithms, links to related video tutorials,  
etc.  That material  could then be filtering into the help patches  
themselves.

A pd-help file wiki would be great, but until then, I think pdpedia  
could be useful.

.hc

On Apr 8, 2009, at 10:35 PM, dmotd wrote:

> hi folks,
>
> i am somewhat interested in investing some time in pdpedia, but i
> have a few concerns with mediawiki as a container for pd related
> data.
>
> obviously mediawiki is an excellent versioning platform and has a
> strong following for many technical wiki's in the open-source
> community. i think its an excellent format for plain text
> information, which takes the form of tutorials/howto/guide, but as
> an object reference it has a limited scope.
>
> this is especially the case when attempting to pull that information
> into another format (ie.. not html). anything pulled off the server
> using the api needs to be parsed to be made useful in another
> context, and in many cases reparsed to pick out the
> meta-references, and this is without getting to the content which
> is often categorised in an entirely different format.
>
> i have previously invested a fair chunk of time in refencing objects
> in a sql database, while my work was not designed with versioning
> in mind, it was designed to be utilised by pd (dd was the projected
> environment) or pd libs internally, or in other formats like a
> postscript reference or generating pddp formatted helpfiles. i have
> recently started picking up the pieces of this project (which i had
> ceased with the initial announcement of pdpedia).
>
> anyhow, what i am beginning to see a need for is an infrastructure
> like mediawiki which stores pd files rather than plain-text. think
> of it like a categorised + tagged svn. this would be a place where
> people can upload files relating to pd use, examples of usage,
> methods of interfacing and anything else that gets passed around on
> this mailing list. keeping with the same wiki format of edits by
> anyone, and versioning each subsequent edit. then in a similar
> method to mediawiki api calls, pd internally could request a list
> of articles (pd-patches) and dynamically retrieve requested
> articles from the pdwiki. thus making the system much more usable
> within the pd environment.
>
> i think the benefit of this would be quite obvious to pd-users, as
> it has been stated many times by numerous people that a plain text
> wiki reference doesn't really make much sense without the
> interactive characteristics of an actual patch.
>
> this is something i would happily put energies into development, and
> in many ways have already started. i will likely end up building
> something that works in this way anyway, so please throw in
> suggestions, before i get carried away ;)
>
> ciao,
>
> dmotd
>
>
>
> On Thursday 09 April 2009 07:25:06 Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> There are lots of good ideas worth trying.  We've talked about it
>> a lot, we just need someone to take charge of it.  I am just too
>> overloaded to handle pdpedia on top of everything else.  Who
>> wants to own it?
>>
>> .hc
>>
>> On Apr 1, 2009, at 11:21 AM, Jean-Noël Montagné wrote:
>>>> 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:
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----------
>>>
>>> * 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)
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----------
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----------
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
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>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>> -----------
>>
>> The arc of history bends towards justice.     - Dr. Martin Luther
>> King, Jr.
>>
>>
>>
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