[PD] helpbrowser and the paths

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On May 4, 2011, at 1:24 PM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

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> On 2011-05-04 18:18, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>
>> Using Pd-extended 0.43.1-20110430 on Mac OS X I don't see this  
>> behvaior
>> with Gem or gridflow.  The helpbrowser.tcl code is the same between
>> pure-data and pd-extended.
>
> the problem also appears with "cxc" (as shipped with debian)
> as soon as the user adds /usr/lib/pd/extra/cxc to their search paths,
> you get both cxc/ and all cxc-abstractions in the rootwindow of the
> help-browser.

> the problem also appears with Pd-0.43.1-extended-debian-squeeze-i386.
>
> afaik, it is perfectly valid to add the path to a library to your  
> search
> paths (even if your personal workflow might be different), as a matter
> of fact, this was the suggested way to load libdirs in PdX until
> recently. it seems weird that this will now degrade the usability of  
> the
> help browser.

This problem stems from the fact that -path and -lib have been muddled  
in concept.  To make it clear, -path should should set a folder to  
load libraries and externals from, and -lib should load a library into  
the global namespace.  If we are treating abstractions like full  
fledged objects, then loading a library with abstractions should also  
load the abstractions into the global space with you do -lib.  That's  
what the libdir loader/format solves.

You choose to ignore the libdir loader, but its in Debian too.  If one  
runs the below command, the cxc would load as a library and the  
abstractions would be treated the same:

pd -lib libdir -lib cxc

IMHO, loaders should not need to be loaded like a library, but should  
instead go into pd/startup where they would be automatically loaded  
when pd starts.  This is how Pd-extended 0.43 does it.  Then you could  
have a library of C binaries, abstractions, lua files, Tcl files, etc.  
You could load it like "pd -lib mymixedlib" and all of the objects  
would be loaded into the namespace more or less the same way.

> fgamdr
> IOhannes
>
> PS: very minor sidenote
> $ diff /usr/lib/pd-extended/tcl/helpbrowser.tcl
> /usr/lib/puredata/tcl/helpbrowser.tcl
> Files /usr/lib/pd-extended/tcl/helpbrowser.tcl and
> /usr/lib/puredata/tcl/helpbrowser.tcl differ


The size of the difference is meaningful, don't hide the text of the  
diff!  It is only to add the "Manuals" section.  There is no  
difference in functionality.

.hc

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