Hi Anton,
For the SC help, The main thing I see you after here is that you can get help no matter where you are. I can see this fitting into PD where the popup menu on objects gives you the choice between help for that particular object, help in an all_about patch that includes this object, or the start of a tutorial on using that object... I don't know where the best place for this is, but the main idea of getting help is currently being tied to the help menu, rather than being tied to the patcher and objects therein.
In all the 15 workshops I have taught it is completely clear that the documentation is the main difficulty students have with learning PD.
should we be talking about this on pd-dev or pd-list?!?!
B>
Anton Woldhek wrote:
Hello guys,
Id just like to add to the discussion how I enjoy the supercollider help system. Ofcourse it taeks full advantage of the fact that sc is text coded and has a help system that was far easier to implemnt then something similar would be in pd. However, it might be worht having a look at it. For those that havent tried SC yet; its help file means that you can select any object or code and press help (similar to pd's right click help on windows) but the beauty is the structure, if a certain object or line of code doesn't have a help file you get thrown to the main help file which directs you to a lot of stuff. Theres tutorials or basic object help etc etc. Navigating it is very easy. Downside is that it isnt very easy to search it, the same problem that pd has ofcourse. I like the idea of having a html server inside pd gui. Im sure it wouldn't be too hard to implemnt a powerfull search engine in it that way. If wanted stuff like Millers book could even be included.
Just to give the group another incentive, the feedback I get from a lot of newbies to coding, the biggest group ofnew users that are most likely to get in contact with pd etc as far as I can tell, say that some of the areas in which pd can improve greatly for them is documentation. Ive also been thinking of porting the max & msp tutorials to pd, however, I think that id run into copyright issues doing that, so perhaps we c/Ian do a rewrite that wouldn't have tha tproblem? Or am I suggesting something that has allready been started. Ofcourse there's millers book but its pretty math heavy for a lot of people that don't know how to look behind that.
Cheers Anton Ps when the time comes that a standard has been chosen id be glad to help cross out some objects on the list to create new documentation for.
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