On the subject of "why Pd GUIs are bad in performance" check out GrIPD, Joe Sarlo's GTK-based GUI builder for Pd:
cheers Miller
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 06:59:37PM +0100, martin pi wrote:
some points to this - or "why is pd really not friendly to the user"
- it has modes (as opposed to modeless
environments (this is why people do not like vi, too). modes are hard to understand - especially for mac people since the mac interface is traditionally modeless
- it does not support the usual features like
drag and drop, cut & paste (in message boxes for example) thus it is inconsistent (and that is the main point why people from the commercial side have problems with free software)
- it does not have a clear rythm of behaviour -
sometimes it is fast as light, sometimes just stuck. most times inbetween. worst when audio processing is on (and realtime on my comp).
yet it is mostly verb-noun based thus good in the general flow
so much for the user interface. have to say that i really like it by the way.
martin
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003 eh@ixi-software.net wrote:
hi
i have been involved lately in software usability stuff and i don't really think PD is bad at all. there are some issues about the installation and
the externals. sometimes its difficult to know how to make them work.
etc... but they are minor if you think that you are getting it for FREE. the interface of PD and PD environment are ok and they are very logical and consistent in terms of usability. I would say that the interface is specially "transparent" compare to many other environments or programs.this is my opinion, and i am not a big PD user at all. if he would be helping maybe PD would be better.
I had a strange conversation yesterday with a teacher who basically said that free software sucks because of usability issues, and that he'll refuse to teach Pure Data because Max is vastly superior at the cognitive level. The segmented patch cord functionnality seems to be of major importance to him. He also seemed quite revolted by the installation process of the OSX version. So to him, the whole idea of free software is simply irrelevent. This man (who call himself an anarchist, go figure) is telling all those young people that they must pay a fortune to get a fancy Mac and a Max/MSP/Jitter licence.
I'm the only one in my community to use free software for multimedia production. I'd really like my people to use free software, but they simply don't want to, because the very second they are in touch with "no so easy to use" softwares, they almost puke. How could we make PD better so these people would agree using free software? I stopped using Max because of its restrictive license, and I prefer PD to jMax because it's lighter and faster.
Most of us don't need fancy segmented patch cords and graphical objects with a puffy look, but can we focus a little bit on the graphical interface issues? I need those Mac addicts to use PD. I like being in touch with people on this list, but I also need real people (those I get in touch with everyday) to use the same tools than me.
-- Marc
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