[PD] New users and external path struggles

jmejia at anestheticaudio.com jmejia at anestheticaudio.com
Sat Jul 29 19:35:39 CEST 2017


Going through Alex's excellent documentation made me think about how
nearly every single new PD user I encounter struggles with OS specific
problems when it comes installing externals. As a teacher who introduces
a lot of new people to PD - I see this a LOT. 

The standard place for putting externals on OSX (~/Library) is hidden by
default - and various versions of OSX require various ways of un-hiding.


Similarly the windows path is hard to find - and permissions and view
settings need to change to make that folder as well. 

So even once the users understand they need to *make* a folder - their
OS stops them from making it in the right place. It would be great if
that os specific stuff was included - because it's a major stumbling
block for a lot of new users. 

This can be sort of mediated with by a bunch of clear and easy to find
OS specific instructions - but that's hard when OSX keeps changing
things etc. I'm happy to write these if that's the best course of
action. 

Basically it means you need to get deep with your OS, and probably do
some google searches to figure out how create a folder in protected
system space before deken is actually useful. 

Most similar software uses unprotected user space as a default place for
installing external libraries. /Documents/Max7,
/Documents/Processing/Libraries - etc. 

Could we add a location like this to PD's standard search path? Then
users could create the folder without jumping through a lot of hoops
with their OS. 

I understand that users can add a path like this manually - but that's
an additional hurdle - and since deken is so tightly integrated, it
doesn't seem like that should be necessary. It also causes confusion
when you move paths across systems.
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