[PD] Tip of the Day

[Lorenzo Sutton]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [PD] Tip of the Day
From: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
To: pd-list at iem.at, Lorenzo Sutton <lsutton at libero.it>
Date: 06/12/10 10:26
>
> --- On Mon, 12/6/10, Lorenzo Sutton<lsutton at libero.it>  wrote:
>
>> From: Lorenzo Sutton<lsutton at libero.it>
>> Subject: Re: [PD] Tip of the Day
>> To: pd-list at iem.at
>> Date: Monday, December 6, 2010, 9:28 AM
>> Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>         What do people think of
>> the little "Tip of the Day" windows that
>>> are in some software?  Are they helpful?
>> Annoying?
>> My two cents.
>> I think they are pretty useless and annoying, as randomly
>> suggesting something doesn't add any help to the total
>> beginner ("did you know you can type ctrl+1 to create a new
>> object?"... well thank you but I'd really like to know how
>> to make those cool sounds  in pd like the videos I saw
>> on youtube!)
>>
>> But I guess it's a matter of personal taste.
>>
>> Maybe, though, some of those "tips" could go in some sort
>> of Pd quick tutorial or cookbook... but searchable and well
>> indexed?
> I was trying to focus on matters of edition and odds and ends that
> are easy to overlook in such tutorials.  Every one of the tips is
> covered somewhere in Pd's help docs, but they're all scattered
> about.
>
> As for searchable and well-indexed-- that's the idea of the META
> subpatch, which I've added to all the internal help patches as well
> as many external help patches, too.  Not too long ago I posted a
> screenshot of a search patch I made that dynamically generates
> results in the form of link + object description.  I've done the
> same for Miller's tutorials but I have no idea whether he'll include
> them or not.
IMHO *that* is a very good idea.. searching for some library/external 
one doesn't always use and can't remember the exact name (including 
upper-lowecase mixes) can be a headache and often ends up with clumsy 
and not-so efficient find  . -iname something in the 
/usr/lib/pd-extended dir :)

I can't recall if there was some discussion on the list about help files 
"best practices", ideally there should always be a comment or the object 
itself with a brief (meaningful) description like:

[osc~] - cosine wave oscillator

This way one could easily index externals and abstractions... I had 
hacked a python script to create a single html page of an extrernals dir 
a while back but it was pretty crude.

Lorenzo