[PD] standard library (was Re: [PD-announce] Pd-extended 0.43.4 released!)

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 2 08:46:49 CET 2013


----- Original Message -----

> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pd-list at iem.at" <pd-list at iem.at>
> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 12:42 PM
> Subject: Re: [PD] standard library (was Re: [PD-announce] Pd-extended 0.43.4 released!)
> 
> On 01/31/2013 11:45 AM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>>  From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>>>  To: pd-list at iem.at
>>>  Cc: 
>>>  Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 4:40 PM
>>>  Subject: Re: [PD] [PD-announce] Pd-extended 0.43.4 released!

[...]

> I agree theoretical consistency is not a worthy goal, that's not the point
> here at all. [import zexy] is a good example.  Let's say a user is looking 
> for
> objects to make and manipulate symbols,

That user can click the search-plugin category link "symbol_op".
The result will be a user-friendly list of everything that would be in
a symbol-oriented library, prefixed with the lib name, followed by an icon
that links to lib info.  If those results don't include everything, someone
can go in and add the keyword "symbol_op" to the help patch for the object
that needs to be included.  Also, if "symbol_op" is too obscure, someone
can change the text of that link on the search plugin home page to be
something more descriptive.  All of those tasks are extremely cheap to
carry out in Pd's current form, and there won't be long threads of
discussion since categories aren't mutually exclusive.


> how about calling tat library
> "symboltricks" or something descriptive, rather than an arbitrary name 
> 'zexy'.
> In python, if I want to work with URLs, I load a 'urllib' or maybe 
> 'urllib2'.

I agree that aptly-named libraries built around a specific domain or
a logical grouping will improve the user experience, but not
nearly to the degree that implementing cross-platform doc search
functionality has.  It will mostly facilitate memorizing the prefixes (libs)
of commonly used externals and reinforcing their shared attributes that
relate directly to that specific library name.  But libraries don't overlap,
and _standard_ libraries are (hopefully) static and are difficult to
amend once set in place.  Tags are the opposite of all that, and are
already implemented.

> 
> The point is that the old way of organizing libraries was around the author,
> not what the library does, like zexy.  Newer libs like iemguts, pmpd, log,
> etc. are organized around a topic, and that makes much more sense.  That's a
> very widely established paradigm for libraries across basically all languages.
> 
> Honestly, in the long run I think this will be less work than maintaining the
> system as it is now.  There are so many exceptions and quirks that is really
> is hard to make progress because some forgotten quirk comes back and bites you.

What are the maintenance problems solved by copying binaries into new
directories?

Also-- you will end up with objects that have different licenses in the same lib.
Is there a precedent for that in any programming language?


-Jonathan




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