[PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

Alexandre Torres Porres porres at gmail.com
Mon Nov 21 04:11:15 CET 2022


It seems the screenshot didn't make into the email, find them attached and
as part of this new message, both from Extended and Purr Data.

[image: Screen Shot 2022-11-20 at 18.16.35.png]

[image: Screen Shot 2022-11-20 at 18.01.46.png]



Em seg., 21 de nov. de 2022 às 00:09, Alexandre Torres Porres <
porres at gmail.com> escreveu:

> While we're at it, over my years in the Pd land, the feedback I got the
> most was how Pd Vanilla's documentation was so "poor" and "inferior" to,
> for instance, Pd-Extended's (not to mention MAX's). Currently Extended is
> reincarnated as Pd-l2ork/Purr Data, which are also praised as "better
> documented". So it kinda surprises me the feedback that things like this
> recent change makes it harder for newbies and more confusing. What to say
> then about the help file of Vanilla objects in Purr Data? If that's
> unknown, It might be a bit shocking :) There are bangs with inconsistent
> different colors, including a shiny light green one for no good reson (not
> to mention curvy lines). Anyway, for reference, find Extended's help file
> of [float] below.
>
> [image: Screen Shot 2022-11-20 at 18.16.35.png]
>
> I became a Pd user when, I don't know, maybe over 90% of people used
> Pd-Extended :) I'm designing a tutorial that I use to teach for about 15
> years and it depended on Pd Extended for over a decade. Now it depends on
> ELSE which has a more discrete template design. I never saw anyone being
> confused by the complexity, colorfulness or whatever... on the contrary!
>
> Pd extended is gone but I'm still not sure we've fully got over it. I've
> seen many people recently still sticking to it specially for didactical
> purposes, because of tutorials that are old and based on it, and because
> they think the cohesive and complete documentation is also better and the
> lack of need to learn how to install externals is another didactical
> advantage. Pd-l2ork & Purr Data serve this purpose well.
>
> So, what I've seen is that people usually have a hard time adapting to
> Vanilla's simpler design and documentation. Also, I've seen requests for
> improvements in this sense and even people feeling as if Vanilla was
> outdated or seemed abandoned in comparison to extended/l2ork/purr... one
> factor being the help files, surely.
>
> My motivation to revamp Pd Vanilla's documentation is highly motivated by
> this context. I take most of the bad reputation Vanilla's documentation has
> comes from its sheer simplicity, which I actually don't have a problem
> with, mostly. I considered such assumptions to be rather unfair and more of
> an aesthetical impression favoring format over content.
>
> When dealing with recent changes to Pd's documentation, I can say there
> were requests to copy the model of Pd-extended/Purr Data into Vanilla or
> use it as a basis. Funny how people have different desires and
> expectations, right? Where I'm getting at is that it is really hard to
> reach a 100% consensus and that diverging ideas will always happen...
>
> There were things that really made sense to incorporate from extended,
> such as "references" for all objects, so I did it. I offered resistance in
> simply adopting the extended standard and tried to meet halfway... my
> perception is that Extended's documentation had lots of noise and
> distractions indeed, and it is quite divergent from the original. So i just
> worked on top of the original trying my best to not be intrusive. Besides
> adding "reference" information, I also proposed minor cosmetic changes and
> a discrete new template again taking into consideration feedback from
> people that had some resistance to Vanilla's documentation, trying to make
> it a bit more appealing aesthetically towards the direction of something I
> always heard complaints about.
>
> The point I am making is that there are thoughts on my side on what people
> mostly want, despite possible divergences. When proposing such things, I'm
> taking it all into consideration. The general feedback from the facebook
> group (with no negative feedback so far) seems to point to the fact that
> the acceptance is mostly good, as I expected.
>
> The other point is that I've been teaching Pd for about 15 years to
> hundreds of people - using Pd extended, Purr Data, Pd Vanilla with external
> libraries that have different and colorful help templates (Cyclone, ELSE,
> FFTease and others) - and not ever has anyone gotten confused or thrown off
> by any of this! Not once!
>
> Not to mention the fact I also eventually use MAX in classes and refer it
> to Cyclone. People deal with it just fine and easily also understand that a
> bang in MAX is the same thing as a bang button in Pd effortlessly. Recently
> I started presenting "Plug Data" into my classes, which carries out of the
> box Cyclone and ELSE and offers a divergent "MAX like" design of bang
> buttons and stuff altogether. Again, all fine, no problem... people get it,
> really.
>
> This is why I say I can't see how this may generate such concerns. Of
> course, other's mileage may vary, but I'm just being honest into what my
> experience has been over the years.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Em dom., 20 de nov. de 2022 às 16:51, Alexandre Torres Porres <
> porres at gmail.com> escreveu:
>
>> Em dom., 20 de nov. de 2022 às 15:07, José de Abreu <
>> abreubacelar at gmail.com> escreveu:
>>
>>> Hello all, ok, some thoughts about the topic.
>>>
>>> I think it would be nice to have colors with meaningful information, we
>>> currently don't have those, indeed just a grey color background doesn't
>>> transport any information, it is just an aesthetic decision, as porres
>>> stated. As it is, it doesn't make much difference if we have them or not...
>>> and as the discussion is going on here, people seem to prefer without them
>>>
>>
>> I wouldn't take a discussion here as the consensus. Because of that, I
>> had opened earlier today a poll on the facebook group, as that seemed like
>> a better place to get a general sense. See:
>> https://web.facebook.com/groups/puredata/posts/10159688754069495
>>
>> I know not all here have facebook, but, so far, out of 24 votes in the 5
>> hours it's been on, no one really opposed. We have 15 people that actually
>> like this and 09 that feel indifferent. Hence, I would take this as
>> something that has more of a positive feedback as a general consensus than
>> a negative one, at least for now.
>>
>> You have a complex take on this by the way. It seems we have similar
>> ideas that this is not a real distraction/confusion as people should be
>> curious and copying from help files wouldn't really be a problem, but
>> you're also taking other things into consideration and proposing yet more
>> colors and complexity, which I think is another conflicting perspective to
>> what was previously brought up as a problem here.
>>
>> I guess that opening a github discussion about documentation ideas and
>> issues is maybe a better place for what you're bringing, cause it's sort of
>> a digression. Would you open it?
>>
>> And also, I would like to stress that I don't call the shots and I didn't
>> do this n the dark. I propose changes and usually people bring stuff up if
>> they oppose it on github. Not a lot of people are there of course, but
>> anyone who cares can join and discuss, propose stuff. For reference, here's
>> the pd documentation project https://github.com/pure-data/pddp
>>
>> cheers
>>
>>
>>
>>
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