[PD] PdDroidParty questions

Chris McCormick chris at mccormick.cx
Sun Jan 6 02:00:21 CET 2019


Hello Oliver!

On 4/1/19 9:10 am, oliver wrote:
> unfortunately the "hurleur" links on http://droidparty.net/ are dead, so 
> i couldn't find any dedicated forums.

Thanks for the heads-up. I have fixed the forum link.

> and your github account says that 
> you are looking for a maintainer (i'm sorry, but i'm really not up to it 
> ...), so i figure PdDroidParty is not actively maintained atm ?

I fixed a rendering regression in November so I guess that means I am 
still maintaining it.

These days I like to think of software which is not receiving changes 
but which people are still using as "complete" rather than 
"unmaintained" but I understand this is an uncommon view. :)

It would be great if there was an enthusiastic person who would fix 
bugs, do minor upgrades, and implement some of the more obvious missing 
features but I am not holding my breath for that.

> 1.) which PD version should i use to create PdDroidParty patches ? you 
> wrote on this list that [text] is not implemented in the actual version 
> (PdDroidParty-debug-283.apk), so is it 0.46 or even 0.45 i'm dealing 
> with here ?

I've just compiled and pushed up a new build (312) and it appears it has 
successfully linked against the latest pd-for-android (libpd) which 
according to a recent commit message says it is version 0.48-1. I also 
just tested a [text] object in a patch and it did not throw a missing 
object error so I guess that is working now.

> 2.) is there anything like a "PD console" possibility so check, whether 
> an object has been loaded or not ? or error logs i could view ?

Yes, I think the best way to do this is have `adb` installed on your 
computer and use the following command with your phone plugged into your 
computer:

adb logcat | grep Pd

If you print things from Pd you can see them via this log.

> 3.) is it possible to send pd control messages like "; pd quit" ?

I think so yes. Certainly the dsp message works.

> 4.) some native PD gui elements like [symbol], [vradio] and [hradio] are 
> not working, is that right ?

Yes. The exact definition of "not working" is that the objects are 
created by Pd but there is no rendering code for them so they are not 
drawn on the phone's screen.

> 5.) the "pure-widgets-demo" stuff is great, but i don't really 
> understand why the moving of the "ViewPort" canvas changes the patch's 
> view on the android device like it does. is "ViewPort" some special 
> variable or object ?

I don't have a good grasp of this feature or how it works although I 
vaguely intend to explore it further. It was implemented by Antoine in a 
fork with a lot of changes I merged some time back. I would start with 
what is in that demo patch and experiment to get to where you want.

Here is a list of things I would love to see fix or updated in PdDroidParty:

  * Fix support for sysex, clock and other less common MIDI messages.
  * Add radio/symbol UIs.
  * Finish and merge the "web renderer" work I've done previously (so 
UIs can be built with HTML, CSS & Javascript).

I could justify implementing these things myself if I was able to tell 
my family that I am getting paid to do it. So if a project had 
commercial backing an option would be to pay myself or another developer 
to make changes. I have previously paid a developer to work on 
PdDroidParty and it was a good experience.

Best of luck and I hope the software is useful to you!

Cheers,

Chris.

-- 
http://mccormick.cx/





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