[PD] New users and external path struggles

[Alexandre Torres Porres]

2017-07-30 7:30 GMT-03:00 Derek Holzer via Pd-list <pd-list at lists.iem.at>:

> new users will not read 14 pages to install libs they have never used
> before.


My documentation won't even tell you how to deal with any issue pointed
here (as going to a hidden system folder and create a standard path, etc).
So it doesn't solve it all and it should work intuitively out of the box
anyway.

I miss Extended for this ease-of-use terribly, and I wonder how after two
> decades of Pd these issues still haven't been addressed completely in a
> systematic way which allows people to simply install and go (as Extended
> did once upon a time).
>

I think Extended overshadowed vanilla's issues of managing externals. After
it died we did something about it, which is deken (introduced in 0.47).
It's all too recent then, but we haven't made much progress since the
release of 0.47-1 and that's unfortunate.


> the real crash test should still be whether a classroom full of undergrad
> art students on mixed platforms, and who don't just-so-happen-to-have a
> background in CompSci as well, can get things up and running without stress.
>

The upcoming release improves it a little, but we're not quite there yet in
my opinion. I can arguably say Pd would pass this test if at least this one
idea was considered: https://github.com/pure-data/deken/issues/156 - I
didn't see a real opposition to it and I also don't see this coming in the
way of future enhancements. So maybe we do at least that for 0.48?

cheers
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/attachments/20170730/49c11773/attachment-0001.html>