[PD] FLOSS book Lists chapter

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, Andy Farnell wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:44:02 -0500 (EST)
> Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, Andy Farnell wrote:
>>> principles. Without it the slogan "The diagram is the program" fails,
>> When I came up with that slogan, I wasn't thinking about portability nor
>> functional equivalence, and I still don't see how they are related.
> They are related above in that they were both goals of ZenGarden.

... I mean how they are related to the slogan. I say that because you 
connected them to the slogan.

>> « The diagram is the program » only meant that unlike other dataflow
> It is the word "only" here that puzzles me Mathieu. Please don't undervalue
> that slogan (and I apologise if I misattributed it), it is astute if not
> profound to recognise a one to one correspondence between the image and
> the logic.

I don't see how the sentence « those diagrams are source code » doesn't 
say that there's (almost) a one-to-one correspondence.

But the one-to-one correspondence isn't exact. I could make a list of ways 
in which it isn't. Nevertheless, with a little care, a screenshot can be 
made in a way that can be read by someone that can repatch it if the .pd 
file itself has not been published.

Now, what does it have to do with portability and with functional 
equivalence of multiple implementations of pd ?

> In interpreting it further one might say "The diagram is the sound", at 
> least that has been my hope for what is to be taken as an appeal to a 
> visual markup for sound in "Designing Sound" *. So far it seems to have 
> worked out well.

When you say "the diagram is the sound", what do you make of all those 
patches that interactively produce sound, and thus can't be directly 
thought to be the sound, but instead, to be a relationship between the 
input and the sound ?

>>> and one cannot use Pd to write books, teach or otherwise share dataflow
>>> programs in a purely visual way.
>> I'm following even less...
>
> Not sure how to help, because not sure where you fell off there. Seems 
> obvious to me that where a picture captures a sound in its entirety it 
> is a powerful pedagogical device. By "purely" I meant sole/only way.

It's that at that point the sentence still seems to be about portability 
and functional equivalence. How are they necessary to prevent the slogan 
from failing, and to make Pd usable to write books, etc. ?

> Actually neither right now, tis Miller Vanilla with a little extra 
> goodness by Amaury Hazan and Paul Brossier to make it work on those 
> nasty iThings. Though what we call RjDj as a product rather than 
> software base is now in its adolescence and may assume new forms with 
> ZenGarden and/or LibPd and/or other frameworks AFAIK. You need to ask 
> Martin Roth who is now in the captains seat for technology there.

Ok, thanks.

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| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC