[PD] questions about PD-extended 0.43 build on Mac (GUI-oriented)

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Dec 30, 2011, at 8:40 PM, Scott R. Looney wrote:

> hey folks, new PD user here, coming from Max 5 on a Mac and trying to rewrite my patch in PD. i read about the new .43 branch builds of pd-extended and how they had a few usability improvements over the older branches. so far i've downloaded the 12/21 and 12/30 builds of pd-extended for Mac. i'll have lots of questions but for now these will suffice:
> 
> 1. is there a way to get the right click context menu for objects working in .43 on the Mac? i read that a GUI plugin is responsible for this, but it seems it should be included in this extended build.

You can make your own object category menu using the attached category_menu plugin.  Edit menutree.tcl to customize your layout.  You can find out more about what you can do with plugins here:
http://puredata.info/docs/guiplugins

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> 2. also read about key bindings-VERY interested in this as i have some RSI issues and shortcuts would be helpful for common tasks.

You can just put the "bind" statements into a text file, name it mybindings-plugin.tcl.  Read thru Pd-extended.app/Contents/Resources/tcl/pd_bindings.tcl (inside the app) to see the default bindings.  There is an experimental 'quick bindings' plugin which lets you do more, but its rough.

> 3. is there a way to edit GUI characteristics (global font size, key bindings,etc) by changing some items in a config text file? i've read that the rewrite uses Tcl/Tk but i'm not really a programmer though i can edit and modify simple CSS or PHP scripts.

using a tiny tiny bit of programming in a plugin, you can do a ton of customization.  Here's some example plugins:
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> 4. lastly - i know the 0.43 branch is considered experimental, but if there's a relatively stable .43 Mac build somewhere that could be recommended it would be appreciated. the Dec 21 build is OK though right-clicking to get Properties or Help lags a lot.


Its more alpha/beta than experimental.  It should be ready for real work but I am sure people will still find bugs.

.hc


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