I STRONGLY disagree with having a manual that is ONLY pd patches -- unless those patches are translated into PDF or HTML also.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I always print important reference material out onto notebooks, and I often do programming with paper and pencil. So, I'd first of all worry that a pd patch might require interactivity to fully understand what is happening. So, at a minimum, all patches should include enough text to understand the information, even if the patch isn't running.

Also, sometimes I reference things on work computers where I don't have pd. And, on Windows, many things still crash pd. There is nothing more annoying than being in the middle of studying things and suddenly having everything shut down and having to load it all up again.

So, I feel that a "manual" worthy of the name should allow one to access the information, regardless of having pd running or not. Perhaps the patches could just be converted to PDF, and somehow a page index created.

I LIKE "book learning", I often learn best that way--I have made many good pd patches and python programs riding the bus or train many times. In fact, I find that when I plan with pen and paper, my pd patches come out much better, and it's very helpful to have traditional reference materials when working in this way. Does everyone really have a problem with making a traditional manual for pd?

~David

On 4/19/06, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans@eds.org> wrote:

Is Adam Hyde on the list?  I think its great for anyone to join,
seriously, the more the merrier.  Already, the intro that I have been
assembling is drawing on the work of 10 or so people.

We discussed the idea of a manual a fair amount in the PDDP
meetings.  I think most/all of us agreed that we want to try to make
a Pd manual that is completely made up of Pd patches.  The point is
to highlight learning thru example for every single step.  Having a
separate manual seems to highlight the book learning style more.
Yes, this will mean a lot of patches.  I already have 60-ish for the
intro.

But I also just made a pager object which allows you to easily
navigate the pages like a manual.  Its included in the most recent
test releases:

http://at.or.at/hans/pd/installers.html

Go to Help->Browser... then manuals/intro and load 0-pager.pd  I
tested it on Windows and Mac OS X.

.hc

On Apr 19, 2006, at 5:07 PM, derek holzer wrote:

> Hey HC and the gang,
>
> Adam Hyde has been working on a PDF/HTML manual for getting PD up
> and running. I've talked with him a bit about how beneficial such a
> thing is versus a set of patches like the ones which have been
> contributed here. But you might want to have a look at it:
>
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/edit
>
> I may be meeting with him soon about where it could go, and I'm
> sure he's open for other suggestions as well.
>
> Mark Polishook wrote:
>
>> Two comments: 1. the patches are very good at identifying core
>> concepts and explaining them. 2. But the hard thing about tutorial
>> writing is it's difficult to show how those small concepts relate
>> to larger artistic concerns.
>
> I agree on both fronts. The main issue with PD is that people use
> it for so many different things that demonstrating "artistic
> concerns" would be pretty limited to what the author happens to be
> doing with PD. All the same, I do find that there is a serious lack
> of "demo" patches, or something like a "user library" that noobs
> could have a look at for inspiration. Simple and not so simple but
> usable tools, along the same lines as the User Library in Reaktor,
> or maybe even the Pluggo patches from Cycling74 (except you can't
> open those up, can you???). I tried to make something like that
> with ParticleChamber, and I know that other stuff has come up on
> the list when people ask about synth collections and the like.
> Might be good to try to collect these kinds of abstractions
> together into a library of sorts (a la RRRAD).
>
> best,
> derek
>
> --
> derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
> ---Oblique Strategy # 76:
> "Give the game away"


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