Just some Friday thoughts about Pure Data and UI elements, like knobs, etc.:

In VCV rack, it's pretty easy to make your own knobs for your modules. You can use the free open source program called Inkscape to make a knob, which is basically an SVG file.

I was thinking that it would be really cool to be able to do something similar in Pure Data. To have an object/external that can load these knob SVG files into it, and then use the mouse to set a value(and knob position) between 0-1, either by dragging up/down or left/right and pressing the mouse on top of the object. It would really open up a whole new universe for Pure Data and making nice user interfaces.

I have been playing with coding audio stuff for a few years in c++, mostly at hobby level, and I was wondering how hard it would be to make an object like that(if possible at all), that can load an SVG files created in Inkscape?

Since VCV Rack is open source, I think I am going to see if I can find the code for the knob implementation this weekend, to see how it works in VCV.

But first of all I am just curious about it and was looking for more experienced programmers though, especially you guys, who know a lot about PD, if it's a completely lost cause or if it is plausible idea.

Personally I have not yet created any Pure Data externals, but I have been looking through some of dr. Hernandez pure data external creation tutorials on YT. I did make a bunch of VCV rack modules, so I know a bit about that.

Any thoughts are welcome

Besides that, have a great weekend!

Best wishes, Jakob