"there is no harm in having "uzi" and "uzi" and "uzi", as long as it is
clear which one is currently used (something Pd still lacks, despite
hans' great work in the past)."

Not sure what you mean here. I guess the worst is just being kinda unstable to know which one will actually be loaded... and how this conflicts are affecting even the help files. I'm not gonna repeat all the issues, but I see it's kinda harmful as it is.

But then, you could deal with this sort of thing is by having the name of the library before the object, like [cyclone/uzi]...

"what you have gained is a centralized distribution of a decentralized development process that has broken any old patch by discarding backwards compatibility."

backwards compatibility is not something that's being actually maintained in extended. It's been kind of a hectic development, some libraries are removed and inserted, and just making it possible to load "Uzi" as "uzi" created new issues as I've raised - like not being able to call kalashnikov as uzi anymore.

So I do have a different opinion, I believe it's not to hard to eliminate some noise that eventually shows up and avoid some conflicts, it looks to me as if it is for the best.

but then, it'd be good to see some real talk about the future of extended, or how to make it easier to add libraries from extended into vanilla before sharing opinions.

cheers

2015-03-08 17:50 GMT-03:00 IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig@iem.at>:
On 03/07/2015 11:27 PM, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
>
> But if you load kalashnikov first, well, now you won't get cyclone's
> version when you type "uzi", but kalashnikov...
>
> so, well, kinda confusing...

yes, very confusing.
but not something unheard of, and i think humans are quite good at
dealing with such things.
imagine, one of the organizers of Pd~con 2007 is called "Alexandre" and
one of the organizers of Pd~con 2009 is called "Alexandre".
one is inclined to think that they are the same (after all, they do
similar things and go by the same name), but it turns out that in fact
they are totally incompatible (crashing *your* place in Montreal might
make me end up sleeping on the street!)¹

> I'd vouch for trying and eliminating the redundancy and equal names
> somehow. I'd suggest killing the alias name of kalashnikov, it'd solve all
> that for Pd Extended.

and get rid of cyclone's [uzi], as it already has [Uzi].

>
> but again, useless and pointless discussion if we're not dealing with an
> update of Pd Extended right now.
>

no, i think that the discussion is important, as it shows one of the big
problems with the architecture of a monolithic Pd-extended.

the question is: do "we" (the hypothetical PdX maintainers) provide a
consistent system where everything is nice and easy; or do we just
provide a largish collection of libraries for all kind of problems.

i think the 1st option is *totally* out of scope.

the fact is, that PdX currently *is* a largish collection of libraries,
sharing a significant overlap (both in functionality and in naming).

it would require multiple fulltime jobs to sort this pile into
consistent stack (and it would take a similar number of workpower to
keep it in that state!).
and once you have eliminated all redundancies, what you have gained is a
centralized distribution of a decentralized development process that has
broken any old patch by discarding backwards compatibility.

just *having* such a distribution does not mean that anybody will use it
(e.g. those people that do not upgrade from PdX-0.42 to PdX-0.43
because...) nor that anybody will *develop* components (externals,...)
for it (apart from those fulltime jobbers).

my point has always been that we should *embrace* the multitude in Pd,
rather than eliminate it.

there is no harm in having "uzi" and "uzi" and "uzi", as long as it is
clear which one is currently used (something Pd still lacks, despite
hans' great work in the past).


having said all that, Pd-l2ork probably already does a decent job in
providing a consistent distribution (but i haven't checked recently; and
of course, l2ork/dsis also *added* a few new objects the functionality
of which is already included in PdX - so not exactly minimizing the pool
of objects either) - most likely because it *is* powered by
institutional backing (see "fulltime jobber").





¹ actually i don't know how often you and alexandre have been confused;
i know for sure that a lot of people mistake me for hans-christoph
although the name is really not *that* similar, and we often shared very
differing opinions. do you have any suggestions for my case :-)?




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