[PD] [pd REFERENCE] format [was: Re: Pd META: Author/Help Patch Authors]

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Sun, 9/6/09, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] [pd REFERENCE] format [was: Re: Pd META: Author/Help Patch Authors]
> To: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Frank Barknecht" <fbar at footils.org>, pd-list at iem.at, "João Pais" <jmmmpais at googlemail.com>
> Date: Sunday, September 6, 2009, 1:34 AM
> On Sat, 5 Sep 2009, Jonathan Wilkes
> wrote:
> 
> > I assume your talking about the HELP_PATCH_AUTHOR
> field, and not
> > AUTHOR.  (But maybe there are better names for
> these.)
> 
> Yes, I confused the two with my example, but let's say that
> the authorship of one object-class is "Johannes wrote the
> original version, Martin added a TCP transport module" or
> "Paquette wrote the whole abstraction, but we'd like to
> thank the XYZ institute for encumbering it with a patent".
> There are numerous things that one may want to put in an
> AUTHOR field in the real world. It's not like a university
> lab, where you just have to write the name of your advisor
> in that field and not think twice (except if you are unlucky
> enough to have several advisors at once).
> 
> > I don't understand your last point, as far as parsing
> in Pd is concerned. If you have the tag
> "frequency_modulation," how is it that the user can search
> for "fm" and get appropriate results?
> 
> They can't. Why should they?

I've been assuming that one of the aims of tags (i.e., keywords) is that 
there would be a search window in the browser so you can search for 
relevant help patches/tutorial patches/ etc.  Or maybe an actual patch, 
since Hans has said that the keywords should be "parsable in pd."  
There are already some categories from which simple, standard keywords 
may be used, but for some terms like "frequency modulation" there's the 
aforementioned problem of the space between the words.  Given that, 
frequency_modulation is certainly one solution, and users can get 
used to using underscores when searching, but why not also include "fm" 
and "modulation" in case the user happens to type that (which would be 
completely reasonable)?

> 
> What's a tag?

A keyword.

> 
> Tell me what's a tag and what's the point of having tags.

I saw your nick in the irc discussion of the PDDP, didn't you actually 
take part in some of these decisions?  Anyhow, here's a link to the 
specification:

http://puredata.info/dev/pddp/SpecificationForHelpPatchSearching

> 
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