[PD] Tip of the Day

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 6 11:18:12 CET 2010



--- 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: 
> Cc: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>, pd-list at iem.at
> Date: Monday, December 6, 2010, 10:42 AM
> -------- 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

That would be:
DESCRIPTION cosine wave oscillator

So in my search patch you can type "oscillator" and get a match.  
You can also search for particular keys/values:
"@AUTHOR Miller Puckette" 
returns all (well, most) of the internal objects, and
"@INLET_0 symbol @OUTLET_0 symbol" 
gives you makefilename, openpanel, iemlib/splitfilename, 
iemlib/stripfilename, etc.

Unfortunately there are A LOT of externals that have stop-gap 
help files without any descriptions (or even example patches).

-Jonathan

> 
> This way one could easily index externals and
> abstractions...

abstractions are types of external-- at least I treat them the same 
by assuming they should all have their own help patches.  (Although 
they do get tagged with the keyword "abstraction" so one could 
narrow a search that way.)

> 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
> 
> 
> 


      



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