Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the info!

Although this seems to be mainly for internal information within the library i.e. object information. (not that this isn't important!).

I was wondering whether there is a method for describing a library as a whole, such as library name, description, version, etc.. Maybe this could be a textfile included within the folder, it would be useful for Pd programs to be able to easily parse information regarding each library. 

Does it make sense to duplicate information such as website in every help file? Would a centralised info textfile be more appropriate for this?

Is there any documentation available or just implemented in a few libraries and not in others?

Cheers,
Joe

On 14 September 2011 18:11, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika@yahoo.com> wrote:
I haven't done any work with the *-meta.pd files-- mostly because half of the extant

libraries would have the recursive description "A collection of seemingly random objects

created by Author x because Author x needed this collection of  objects".  Btw-- whoever

created them must have tried to do an automated search/replace that went haywire,

because several of them have comments sitting on top of each other, which makes them

unreadable.

What I've done is add a [pd META] subpatch to each help patch with comments in the

"TAG value1 value2 etc." format.  I use the following tags:
ALIAS alias for the object.  For trigger, this would be t
KEYWORDS possible values are listed and defined in all_about_help_patches.pd
DESCRIPTION
LICENSE GPL v2 v3 SIBSD (I think there's a tcl/tk license somewhere in there, too)
INLET_0 possible values are: symbol float list bang pointer anything.  Also custom

selectors like: set clear etc.
INLET_1
INLET_2
etc.
OUTLET_0
OUTLET_1
etc.
INLET_N this is for an object that can have a variable number of inlets (usually based on

a creation argument.  Ex: [pack])
INLET_R refers the the rightmost inlet, for an object like [append] which always takes a

pointer in its last inlet.
OUTLET_N
OUTLET_R
AUTHOR author(s) + author's email, or anything else you want to include here

WEBSITE author's website link

HELP_PATCH_AUTHORS
GENRE omitted for help patches, but you can use it to mark a patch as one of the following:

tutorial all_about_pd.  Could probably add "example" as well...

I'm already using these for some searches with my search-plugin.

-Jonathan



----- Original Message -----
> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans@at.or.at>
> To: Joe White <white.joe4@gmail.com>
> Cc: pd-dev@iem.at
> Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:44 AM
> Subject: [PD-dev] automated library updates WAS: pd-extended 0.43 release push
>
>
> I think that at this point, Jonathan Wilkes is the expert on the meta
> data.  If you wanted to take on trying to do automatic updates using the
> existing library format [1], that would be awesome.  That should be
> possible on any platform.  The new downloads section should make it a
> lot easier to automatically find and download updates:
> http://puredata.info/downloads
>
> .hc
>
> [1] http://puredata.info/docs/developer/LibraryTemplate
>
> On Wed, 2011-09-14 at 14:22 +0100, Joe White wrote:
>>  Sounds promising Hans,
>>
>>
>>  Is there any more info about this meta structure you were referring
>>  to. How far has this progressed? What are the implications for
>>  existing libraries and for programs trying to interface with it?
>>
>>
>>  I'm on OSX and have no knowledge of Debian so I'm not sure how
> helpful
>>  I could be. If there is anything I could do let me know. I'm
>>  interested in seeing how this would work from a user perspective, e.g.
>>  being able to seeing available libraries, downloading and updating
>>  them. I'm looking into adding git support in the app I'm writing.
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>  Joe
>>
>>  On 13 September 2011 19:43, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans@at.or.at>
>>  wrote:
>>        
>>          Hey Joe,
>>        
>>          This is a great idea that has been talked about in the past
>>          every now
>>          and then.  The big missing piece has always been someone who
>>          wants to do
>>          the work to implement it.  Personally, I've been moving my own
>>          Pd
>>          packaging work to be based out of Debian.  And I've been
>>          trying to make
>>          a similar process for Pd-extended (see GettingIntoPdextended
>>          from the
>>          original email) You can see the libraries I maintain because
>>          they are
>>          (almost) all in Debian:
>>        
>>         http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=hans@eds.org
>>        
>>          We know have a lot of the pieces in place to make this task a
>>          lot
>>          easier. For example, the libraries all have *-meta.pd files
>>          which
>>          contain meta information about the library.  Jonathan Wilkes
>>          has been
>>          doing some great work around the meta data, but the more
>>          people working
>>          on this stuff, the more that gets done :)
>>        
>>          .hc
>>        
>>        
>>          On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 17:36 +0100, Joe White wrote:
>>          > Hey,
>>          >
>>          >
>>          > Forgive me if this is not totally on topic but I had an idea
>>          a while
>>          > ago a wondered what the feasibility of it was.
>>          >
>>          >
>>          > I don't really have a great knowledge of the Pd extended
>>          package but
>>          > how possible would it be to have each library versioned (say
>>          on
>>          > github) as individual repositories that then get pulled in
>>          the build.
>>          > Maybe you could see when certain libraries have been changed
>>          and
>>          > update them on your own machine. Along the idea of how
>>          macports
>>          > works.
>>          >
>>          > Again, apologies if this is a really stupid question.
>>          >
>>          >
>>          > Cheers,
>>          > Joe
>>          >
>>          > On 13 September 2011 17:06, Hans-Christoph Steiner
>>          <hans@at.or.at>
>>          > wrote:
>>          >
>>          >         I was thinking that now would be a good time to
>>          start a
>>          >         release cycle
>>          >         for Pd-extended 0.43.  There is a ton of really
>>          useful new
>>          >         stuff in the
>>          >         editor with the new gui, plugins, etc.  So I'm
>>          thinking I'll
>>          >         delay some
>>          >         of the library work I've been doing, and revert to
>>          the 0.42.5
>>          >         behavior
>>          >         of loading a bunch of libraries by default at
>>          startup.  But I
>>          >         personally
>>          >         be dropping my support for a number of included
>>          libraries, but
>>          >         anyone is
>>          >         welcome to pick them up if they want to see them
>>          stay in
>>          >         Pd-extended.
>>          >         You can see the state of things here:
>>          >
>>          >        http://puredata.info/docs/LibrariesInPdExtended
>>          >
>>          >         This can be a trial run of the new process of
>>          keeping things
>>          >         in
>>          >         Pd-extended.  Basically, I need to reduce my
>>          maintenance load,
>>          >         I just
>>          >         can't keep up any more.  So I am proposing that
> the
>>          new
>>          >         process for
>>          >         getting things into a Pd-extended release.  First,
>>          the new
>>          >         release
>>          >         branch will be a copy of the previous release
>>          branch. Each
>>          >         library/doc
>>          >         has a maintainer, listed on the
>>          LibrariesInPdExtended page.
>>          >          It is that
>>          >         maintainer's job to update their libraries/docs
> into
>>          the
>>          >         pd-extended
>>          >         release branch, otherwise the version will be the
>>          same as the
>>          >         previous
>>          >         version.  Each version of a library included in
>>          Pd-extended
>>          >         needs to a
>>          >         fully released version with a proper version number
>>          and a
>>          >         release posted
>>          >         on its own page in the
>>         http://puredata.info/downloads section,
>>          >         and
>>          >         ultimately uploaded to Debian/testing (I'm happy
> to
>>          sponsor
>>          >         people's
>>          >         packages for upload to Debian once they are ready).
>>           The full
>>          >         process is
>>          >         documented here:
>>          >
>>          >
>>         http://puredata.info/docs/developer/GettingIntoPdextended
>>          >
>>          >         Comments, feedback, concerns?  I'd like to make
> this
>>          a much
>>          >         more open
>>          >         and participatory process.
>>          >
>>          >         .hc
>>          >
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>>          >
>>          >
>>        
>>        
>>        
>>
>>
>
>
>
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