[PD] Pdpedia and random generation

Thu Apr 9 10:24:13 CEST 2009

hi dmotd,

your post is great, it reminded me of all the ideas I had before
starting pdpedia.
my main motivation for working on a pd(pedia) object
database/documentation was to help users (including myself) find the
right object for their purpose and help developers by preventing
redundancy in writing new objects. -- I also got stuck by the
limitations of mediawiki.
some of the things, for example that I'd like to see:
make heavy use of *data mining* in existing pd patches: It should be
possible to know, how often an object is used, and how often it is
connected to which other object and which objects share the same
window. it should even be possible to tell the search engine where in
the patch (x/z area) an object was placed.
I want to search for objects related to key words, tags, maybe
categories (although a fixed structure is definitely a bad idea),
libraries, similar objects, sort by all kinds of means (date,
popularity, operating system).
On top of this pd-base there should be a place like *youtube*, where
you can post your own patches, have favorites, have a list of favorite
objects. I know that it is not possible (yet) to play a pd patch
within a browser, but I am sure someone will come up with a firefox
plugin anytime soon.
I also think that people should be able to comment on objects, or rate
them, or have rss feeds if someone posts a new patch that contains a
certain object or is related to a certain topic.
and your point about exchanging data formats is extremely important,
too. I know that mediawiki has a method to import/export - in theory,
but this can by no means compared to a real query api.

of course, maintaining all that information is a hell of a work. that
was the point where the wiki idea came into place (a lot of people
contributing). but after a year of pdpedia I still don't see this
taking off, which makes me want to try out something new.
btw is there any literature or real world examples of how other
groups/open source communities deal with the *lack of
physical/financial resources*?

marius.

2009/4/9 dmotd <dmotd at gmx.net>:
> 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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