oops, so then all the mess comes from pd-extended... maybe we should differentiate between "normal" external behaviour and pd-extended behaviour that could actually be different because it recompiles the externals and also can relocate help-patches in its own way. the "normal" way would be to allow the developer to put her files wherever she wants. and come up with an individual installation method and probably the need to add a path and lib flag to the startup script for every external. but in pd-extended it should only be necessary to add startup flags for additional libraries that are not already included in pd-ext (like pdj, or some flext externals). and therefor I think the pd-ext installation paths should be uniform, either all into library subfolders or none. one problem remaining is that some help-file paths seem to be hardcoded in the externals, which I think is not a good idea? marius.
IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
marius schebella wrote:
I think the whole help browser stuff is very messy. there is "1.manual" versus "manuals" "media" vs "sound" and "7.stuff" versus "examples" some of the stuff is pd patches, some are textfiles, some are html docs.
that is interesting, i just have: 1.manual 2.control.examples 3.audio.examples 4.data.structures 5.reference 6.externs 7.stuff sound
which is not that badly organized :-)
I think all html or text manuals should be in a separate section of the help menu, not in the browser (in pd-extended there already is a html menu-entry) 2.-4.and 6.(although, I am not sure about 6.) should be in a tutorials submenu. 5. reference should be called "help-patches"
what makes "help-patch" better than "reference"?
most of pd's help patches are really "references", especially if you browse it via the menu (a help-patch is the thing you open via right mouseclick; a reference is the thing you browse)
sound should be a part of media. then you get HELP: --- HTML --- --- Pd --- --- Gem --- --- (other manuals) --- BROWSER --- --- Tutorials --- --- --- (control examples) --- --- --- (audio examples) --- --- --- (data structures) --- --- --- (external tutorials??) --- --- Examples --- --- --- soundfile tools --- --- --- synths ... --- --- --- (tidied up content of 7.stuff) --- --- --- (tidied up content of examples) --- --- Help Patches --- --- Media --- --- --- images and video --- --- --- sounds --- --- --- obj., mtl. ...
for me (if i understand your proposal correctly), this only makes sense if objects would be grouped by function rather than by library. this seems to have been unfeasible to do in the last year.
i think we should take practice into account.
fmgas.dr IOhannes