I'm sorry for this more like OT, it's just my thought about improving PD and it's externals in another way.
I'm struggling ...
PD is one of the best tools for making people learn/experiment/perform/interact digital/electronic art at it's best. But where are the people that are PD's target. I'm trying to suggest that PD should try to follow a Popper-alike way of developing. Make it easy accessable for the people and use their input. Except if PD and it's externals are purely egoistic developments, which i don't think is the case ;)
The more people you can involve the more feedback/developer/help you get in improving. I'm sorry for saying such things, as it is something that is an actual idea of most of the people here, i'm not trying to sell you for stupid.
Maybe i'm just frustrated about my own lack of skill. I was fascinated about projects like pdp, gridflow and especially desiredata. But installing them is a hell for me as a OS X user, and the least i wanna do is search/install for all the necessary things.
Now just some suggestions (excuse me for being rude):
- Vastly improvement of the webcommunity, very important:
Except for a very good maillinglist there is no real source for a community for pd on the net. The forum at hurleur.com is a joke, and that the official site is deadland is just sad. Furthermore the site needs to be ordered and probably hardly overworked, there is nothing wrong in making it accesible to as many people as possible by runnig it in plone, but is it nessecary? The people accesing the site now will probably not need that the site is universible compatible with every last browser on this earth and history, etc.
- Improvement in usability of PD & e(xternals):
Projects like the installers of iOhannes and desiredata are genial! All externals should follow a path where they can make themself accesible to the public with ease. It must be very frustrating to put lot's of effort and time into something and then nobody wants it.
- And last, the documentation:
Order, Unifying, Improve
Please don't kill me for this mail. Lately i had a message in a Fortune-Cookie saying that "i have a reputation for being very straight forward and honest", i agree and want to follow that path. This mail is not meant to flame or criticize, especially not the developers. I bow down in front of the huge effort all of you put into PD & e. I just think the way of opening and easy accessing the public is the best way in proving that PD is the best and drive it's development.
yours, adrian