[PD] Pd, Max/Msp, Reaktor, Plogue Bidule... How do these, compare?

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Fri, 3/19/10, Michal Seta <mis at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Michal Seta <mis at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd, Max/Msp, Reaktor, Plogue Bidule... How do these, compare?
> To: "Pierre Massat" <pimassat at gmail.com>
> Cc: "PD list" <pd-list at iem.at>, "Matteo Sisti Sette" <matteosistisette at gmail.com>, "Marco Donnarumma" <devel at thesaddj.com>
> Date: Friday, March 19, 2010, 5:31 AM
> Hi Pierre,

[...]

> I think that pdpedia (http://wiki.puredata.info) tried to
> address this
> issue.  Recently someone suggested to get rid of it
> because it was not
> being used much.  Perhaps it was not advertised enough
> and the
> resulting slim user-base did not provide much motivation
> to
> maintainers.  Pdpedia addresses also (in some ways)
> you earlier point,
> that of finding *about* classes.  Type "oscillator"
> for instance and
> you get hundreds of results, some pointing to various sound
> generators
> that actually fall into the category of oscillators. 
> I think pdpedia
> is a great idea and is a potential spot for gathering info
> about as
> many externs as possible.  Once again, the problem is
> in maintenance
> (this is why someone wanted to shut it down) because we all
> know that
> developers don't want to write documentation and we, users,
> composers,
> video artists, installation artists, students, lurkers and
> everyone
> else do not want to do it because we do not understand the
> developers
> and, in any case, we don't have time because we have
> deadlines in
> whatever we do.  Right?  Right.  I am guilty
> of that, too.

There's an old pddp mockup on puredata.info of a search feature.  That 
would help things out a lot.  I like the idea of pdpedia but I don't 
want to have to leave pd to find out what kind of objects are right here 
on my harddrive.

Another helpful thing would be supercollider-style stats when Pd is 
started.  I see the printout of loaded libraries, but for example I'd 
really like to know how many objects that is.  (And maybe how long it 
takes to load them.)

Also, is there any way to know how many pd-extended objects have no 
helpfiles?  I think any time clicking "Help" on an object returns the 
following...
'sorry, couldn't find help patch for "serial.pd"'
... it should be considered a bug, because for some "helpless" objects 
it's practically impossible to even figure out what library they're in to read their source code.

-Jonathan