I don't actually *like* those solutions for the scenario I just described.
I think the path dialog has a distinct purpose of its own that is not shared by those options. (These aren't always advantages--just differences) --It's persistent across sessions. --I can use my own organization of abstractions in some far flung corner of my user directory. --It's always the full path.
For some types of work, the path dialog really makes sense to me. I work on it sporadically, I crash Pd frequently, and when I start it up, having those settings saved in the config will save me some time.
[declare] and [import] are really for sharing patches with other people--but maybe I'm not sharing anything and I'm just cooking up some buggy externals. Then, I want to be able to work quickly--*not* correctly.
Chuck
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@at.or.at wrote:
For this situation, I think there is no need for custom paths, you can use the built-in default paths, which are the default in pd-vanilla, pd-extended, and pd-l2ork.
For the rjlib, merely drop the 'rj' folder into the standard default install location: http://puredata.info/docs/faq/how-do-i-install-externals-and-help-files
Then use the object by doing [rj/s_fm4] or whatever. Or you could you:
[import rj] [s_fm4]
or:
[declare -lib rj] [s_fm4]
The only use case for setting your own path that I know is like [declare -path lib/] where you set a folder within your project to load libs from. That is accomplished much better with [declare -path] than setting a global pref because it means the patch has the whole config included with it.
.hc
On Tue, 2011-09-20 at 13:30 -0500, Charles Henry wrote:
Sorry-I'm a bit confused as to the difference between libs and paths, at the moment.
Here's a situation where I like to have the path dialog: I download an archive of abstractions (like RJDJ), and I'd like to be able to put them anywhere, so if there's a couple different versions, I can just tell them apart from folders.
With the path dialog, I can just right away see what set of abstractions are on the path, change it, apply, and get to work.
How would I accomplish the same thing without it?
Chuck