If I understand the issue correctly, this is to be expected. To be able to load abstractions or one-binary-per-object externals you have the choice of a) adding the path to it to the paths preferences of your Pd installation globally b) declare the path to it in the patch you are using it in with [declare -path list-abs]. It assumes that the root folder for all your externals (~/Documents/Pd/externals/) is defined in the global paths preferences and will append the list-abs folder to that and search for the object or abstraction in there.
Option b) is the newer possibility and has the advantages that you don't have to load all the possible externals at startup and that your patch becomes more portable.
m.
On 01.06.20 21:44, Peter Nyboer wrote:
A bit of a noob question here… I recently installed list-abs from deken on a vanilla PD 50-2 on macOS Catalina. My patch wasn’t able to find the abstractions until I explicitly added the path ~/Documents/Pd/externals/list-abs to the Paths preferences. Is that to be expected?
Peter