[PD] [pdconv16_r] Topics: Deken/Core Objects/Website/Community Involvement

[Derek Kwan]

> Joe Deken and Jaime Oliver and I are interested in setting up a round table
> discussion to consider possible future developments for Pd vanilla.  I have a
> lengthy list of ideas and I'm sure many of you have ideas as well.  To prepare
> for this, it would be helpful to collect some of them in advance.  If you
> have a direction you'd like to see Pd development go in, please feel free to
> suggest it in a followup e-mail to this one.

Oh boy, I have a bunch bunch of ideas that are kinda sorta related to
each other sorta not. Here we go!:


DEKEN:
    - I think library management is important to the future of Pd and
      I'd like to discuss idea of how to improve it. I basically think
      the current idea needs a bit more meat on its bones to truly be
      helpful and integral to the Pd experience. I'd like to discussion
      what sorts of metadata would be helpful to have, how updates to
      libraries can be handled (esp with previous versions on a user's
      computer), if perhaps it could handle package manifests ala
      Node.js so that projects are easier to distribute (which also
      brings up the issue of local project install vs global install)

CORE OBJECTS:
    - I'd like to discuss if the core objects included with Pd Vanilla
      should be expanded and what they should be expanded with. I like
      the modularity of Pd (this aspect being reinforced by Deken), but
      I also think maybe including objects to increase the functionality
      to Pd could be added. Things such as additional GUI objects,
      multidimensional arrays, more powerful sequencing tools, global
      transport like functions, hash tables, etc. 

WEBSITE:
    - I'd like to discuss the future of the website (not totally related
      to Pd Vanilla, but important to the Pd world as a whole). I think
      the Pd community lacks a good solid go-to resource on the web
      that's up to date. Puredata.info has been a great resources, but
      I'm not sure that the wiki format lends itself to simplicity and
      clarity, esp for Pd newbies. It also hasn't been the best at being
      up-to-date (I mean, there's still mentions of Pd-extended in
      several places) and it would stand a better chance of being more
      up to date if more people in the community could freely contribute
      to its upkeep. I also think that a centralized Pd website could
      potentially become a great showcase of what people have done with
      Pd and a resource for abstractions and example code and although
      that can be done with member pages, I don't think member pages are
      the best way to get this info across (although I'm not opposed to
      member pages, I have one!)

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:
    - I'm not sure if it's just me finally working on Pd community
      projects like Cyclone and writing on the list, but I have a
      feeling that the community has been grown and become more active
      and eager to be involved in the development and improvement of Pd
      and Pd-related projects and I'd like to explore perhaps if somehow
      more people could be involved in Pd Vanilla development, how that
      could be achieved, and how it can be made sure that development is
      focused and doesn't stray from a central idea of what Pd Vanilla
      should be.


Looking forward to some fruitful discussion!

Derek

==================
Derek Kwan
www.derekxkwan.com