Hi -
So during lockdown here in Ireland, I bought a Sensel Morph to try and improve my PD performance abilities. I love the device, and very quickly graduated to trying to work with its MIDI MPE capabilities. This rapidly led me down the road to writing an an external [mpoly] object to handle the variety of messages that need to be dispatched for MPE. Having become frustrated with limitations in Sensels MIDI mapping software, I then proceeded to write a series of external objects that use the Sensel device API to directly communicate with PD.
And it all seems stable enough to release, but I'm a bit hazy on some aspects of publishing to deken, and was hoping someone could either answer my questions or point me to an appropriate document (as these questions haven't been addressed in anything I have found so far).
1 - How can I test my packaging and its installation? 2 - Can deken packages be deleted/removed/name changed? 3 - Do I need to support all architectures on day 1? (currently I build Linux/Win) 4 - Where can I get the nice help templates used by Else/Cyclone &cet? Everything I've found online seems to be both massively out of date and expects that you already know how to use it. 5 - One or Two packages? Currently, I have two separate shared libs, one requires the Sensel library, one does not. I haven't checked the licensing yet, but I assume the Sensel library probably can't be distributed in a deken friendly way.
So that's my list :) Any help would be greatly appreciated. The help template question is particularly vexing, as I find that help files for PD objects are *essential* to being able for me to figure things out, even when I grab someone else's code.
Thanks in Advance d
On Sun, 2021-01-03 at 00:46 +0000, David Rush wrote:
3 - Do I need to support all architectures on day 1? (currently I build Linux/Win)
I don't claim authority in the matter, but I'd say no. Just support the architectures you're able to build for. You can always ask others to build your code on other platforms. One scenario could be that someone builds the binaries, sends them to you and you sign and upload them, so that the packages appear under your name (if you want that).
Roman
On Sun, 2021-01-03 at 00:46 +0000, David Rush wrote:
2 - Can deken packages be deleted/removed/name changed?
Yes / Yes / I don't know
However, deleting already uploaded packages is discouraged. Check your results with scrutiny before uploading them. If you find issues, you always can override existing packages with a newer version. If the newer package uses a higher version number, it'll appear at the top in the Deken's result list.
Do not modify or delete/remove already uploaded - which means "published" - stuff. If you discover a serious problem right after uploading, you might delete the package (without anyone noticing it). Roman
Em sáb., 2 de jan. de 2021 às 22:20, David Rush kumoyuki@gmail.com escreveu:
4 - Where can I get the nice help templates used by Else/Cyclone &cet? Everything I've found online seems to be both massively out of date and expects that you already know how to use it.
As the one who worked on the help files of the two libraries you cited, I can say I don't really know :) haha...
Ok, more seriously, I just did it based on stuff that was out there before. I guess you mentioned the pddp templates? See https://puredata.info/dev/pddp/DraftReferenceDesigns - is that what you are calling outdated?
Anyway Cyclone 0.2 had this template I'm not sure exactly where it came from, and I just made some variations on it. You can check PD-l2ork's help structure, I guess it came from there... see "all_about_help_patches.pd".
Now, there are some common practices you can get inspired from but no strict rules or golden standard on how to structure your help file... and I'm not really happy with what I have and eventually I could change it a bit...
What I can tell you is that making a good documentation file is hard, takes a lot of time and thought and that it is usually neglected in the Pd world. I cry every time I open a patch with a big mesh of wires all over the place and over messages/objects... sometimes I can't even sleep. Just try to make things clean!!! And document all the messages! Organize it in subpatches if there's too much.
cheers
On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 at 19:28, Alexandre Torres Porres porres@gmail.com wrote:
Em sáb., 2 de jan. de 2021 às 22:20, David Rush kumoyuki@gmail.com escreveu:
4 - Where can I get the nice help templates used by Else/Cyclone &cet? Everything I've found online seems to be both massively out of date and expects that you already know how to use it.
As the one who worked on the help files of the two libraries you cited, I can say I don't really know :) haha...
Ok, more seriously, I just did it based on stuff that was out there before. I guess you mentioned the pddp templates? See https://puredata.info/dev/pddp/DraftReferenceDesigns - is that what you are calling outdated?
well, the most recent date I find is for Template 11 in 2007. I do realize that a Template 13 does exist, but I haven't been able to find the date for it. Generally code that hasn't been touched for 13 years has suffered some level of bit-rot. None of the templates make it very clear how to actually go about customizing them. I've opened up a couple and there are a lot of canvases with receive symbols, so it looks like perhaps one is meant to send messages in order to get text into some of the fields. Other things like some of the font manipulations and separator bars are also unclear.
Of course, my practice with PD is almost entirely about making things that go "boop" and not pretty images, so maybe there is just a large gap in my knowledge of the basic language primitives. It would be nice to have some clearer idea of how to even get started with the templates though, because I'm not sure that I really want to spend a month or more of my Copious Free Time (tm) figuring out how to use a complex programming object to hold documentation when I could bang our web pages in a day or three.
Anyway Cyclone 0.2 had this template I'm not sure exactly where it came from, and I just made some variations on it. You can check PD-l2ork's help structure, I guess it came from there... see "all_about_help_patches.pd".
hmmm...kay. This is arguably a thing that needs some love though.
Em sáb., 2 de jan. de 2021 às 22:20, David Rush kumoyuki@gmail.com escreveu:
2 - Can deken packages be deleted/removed/name changed?
yes, but not everyone is happy with that :)
-
Alexandre Torres Porres -
David Rush -
Roman Haefeli