[PD] Open midi files in PD Vanilla?

[Peter Brinkmann]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 10:51 PM, patrick <puredata at 11h11.com> wrote:
>> (Or does libpd not load externals?)
>
>
> libpd is able to load an external, i have successfully used Gem.pd_linux
> with libpd as a standalone pd / Gem application.

That's great! Did you document your experiences anywhere? I get lots
of questions about Gem and libpd, and it would be great to have a
resource to point people to.

About libpd and externals, there was the licensing problem of the expr
family of externals (which has been resolved now, I think), but the
main goal was to keep libpd as small as possible. Even at its current
size, it's already pushing the memory budget of many games and mobile
applications.

Generally speaking, it's pretty straightforward to use externals with
libpd: If your platform supports dynamically loaded libraries, you can
build the external as usual and deploy it with your application; just
make sure that the location of the shared library is on libpd's search
path (deploying externals for Android currently requires an extra
step, but as soon as the new OpenSL version becomes official, that
will no longer be necessary).

If your platform doesn't support dynamic loading (iOS is the only case
I'm aware of), then you can just statically link the externals with
your app and explicitly call its setup function. Details are in the
libpd wiki:https://github.com/libpd/pd-for-ios/wiki/ios
Hope this helps,
     Peter