-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [PD] Tip of the Day From: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com To: pd-list@iem.at, Lorenzo Sutton lsutton@libero.it Date: 06/12/10 10:26
--- On Mon, 12/6/10, Lorenzo Suttonlsutton@libero.it wrote:
From: Lorenzo Suttonlsutton@libero.it Subject: Re: [PD] Tip of the Day To: pd-list@iem.at Date: Monday, December 6, 2010, 9:28 AM Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
Hi, What do people think of
the little "Tip of the Day" windows that
are in some software? Are they helpful?
Annoying? My two cents. I think they are pretty useless and annoying, as randomly suggesting something doesn't add any help to the total beginner ("did you know you can type ctrl+1 to create a new object?"... well thank you but I'd really like to know how to make those cool sounds in pd like the videos I saw on youtube!)
But I guess it's a matter of personal taste.
Maybe, though, some of those "tips" could go in some sort of Pd quick tutorial or cookbook... but searchable and well indexed?
I was trying to focus on matters of edition and odds and ends that are easy to overlook in such tutorials. Every one of the tips is covered somewhere in Pd's help docs, but they're all scattered about.
As for searchable and well-indexed-- that's the idea of the META subpatch, which I've added to all the internal help patches as well as many external help patches, too. Not too long ago I posted a screenshot of a search patch I made that dynamically generates results in the form of link + object description. I've done the same for Miller's tutorials but I have no idea whether he'll include them or not.
IMHO *that* is a very good idea.. searching for some library/external one doesn't always use and can't remember the exact name (including upper-lowecase mixes) can be a headache and often ends up with clumsy and not-so efficient find . -iname something in the /usr/lib/pd-extended dir :)
I can't recall if there was some discussion on the list about help files "best practices", ideally there should always be a comment or the object itself with a brief (meaningful) description like:
[osc~] - cosine wave oscillator
This way one could easily index externals and abstractions... I had hacked a python script to create a single html page of an extrernals dir a while back but it was pretty crude.
Lorenzo