So Pd is a platform that has been around long time and has been thru many renditions, so there is the inevitable build-up of cruft. Mostly it seems that this cruft has stayed around, kept for compatibility purposes. Since almost all of the externals are now in the CVS, we can now introduce a unified method of deprecation.
A good example of this would be [linuxevent], [linuxjoystick], and [linuxmouse]. People have built patches using these objects, but I am in the process of finishing up a unified, cross-platform system to replace these ([hid], [linuxhid], [darwinhid], etc.) and I am no longer going to maintain them at all. So the three previous objects would be put into the "deprecated" folder, and then people who needed to use them would just add the "deprecated" folder to the path.
Deprecation is very common in programming environments like Java, and I think we should be thinking of Pd as a programming environment rather than an application. Since there a number of objects that cause problems (conflicts, ancient code maintenance, etc.), I think we should deprecate them.
For when we deprecate objects, I am thinking that they should be put in a folder "externals/build/src/deprecated" and then removed from their location in CVS. They will always be in the history of the CVS repository if anyone needs to get to them.
.hc
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"[W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are deliberately throwing it away to benefit those who profit from scarcity." -John Gilmore