Hi all,

I only know Pd and i've been using it for only a year and a half, so i don't have anything interesting at all concerning the comparison with other softwares. But since many of you have been discussing Pd's documentation, i'd like to share my own experience and point to something Pd-newbies my like.
Although i wouldn't say that Pd is easy to learn, i believe that anybody who has a fairly precise idea of what he wants to achieve with Pd can get a satisfying result within a couple of months, provided that he reads the first chapters of Miller Puckette's book and that he asks for help on either the Pd forum or the pd-list.
Yet there are two points regarding the documentation which could be improved in my opinion.
One is the documentation of the Extra objects of Pd-extended. It seems to like the help browser was designed at a time when there were very little externals. The vanilla help is well organized and easily accessible, but such is not the case for the massive bulk of externals, and this is a pity because i keep finding wonderful new objects everyday. A way of fixing this would be maybe to update the list of objects on Floss more frequently as well as revamping the structure of the Pd's help completely (don't know how easy or even feasible this would be though?).
Another thing that'd be nice to make available for new users would be a comprehensive set of generic patches, which would cover the whole range of DSP audio. A little bit like Puckette's audio help patches, only on a higher level (stuff like a basic drum machine, a comprehensive synth, granular synthesis, etc). I know that these aren't impossible to find, but it'd be nice to have it all in the same place. I'm saying this because i've found myself re-inventing the wheel more often than not, and it is always a bit frustrating to find out that somebody did the same thing you've been working on for weeks long time ago, and way better than you. This happened to me again a few days ago about spectral delay. Basically what a new user would need (well, at least what'd need) is a set of patches that tells him "Ok, you've seen all these commercial softwares (editors, sequencers, soft synths, vst plugins,etc.), well here's what's in their guts, and here's the basic stuff one can do with a computer in 2010." This in my view would be a great help and would boost Pd user's creativity a great deal, because they wouldn't have to re-invent (almost) everything from scratch, and they'd learn very quickly what is new and what is not. This is especially true for people who learned Pd by themselves, without taking any classes about audio programming and digital music theory.

Anyway, the more i use it, the more i like it. Sometimes i wonder what Pd will be like 10 years from now. Whatever it'll be i'm excited!

Cheers!

Pierre

2010/3/18 Matteo Sisti Sette <matteosistisette@gmail.com>
Marco Donnarumma escribió:


Well, what is reasonable is quite subjective though.

You have a point :)


> Anyway I referred
to a "global" comparison, as you said the (_computing_) domain of both do overlap, but I specified the importance that IMHO the community supporting the project has.
I personally don't think the community approach of Max is comparable to Pd.

I agree here. Well, I don't know if I agree that they are not comparable, I agree they are hugely different. But yes, when you need to chose between two "comparable" software, the kind of community surrounding them is a factor you have to take into account, and indeed, neither "kind of community" is better, it is just a matter of which one best suit your needs (i.e.: you prefer a company that sells the software and that can give you support for a fee, or that you can expect support from since you paid the software, or you may prefer an open source community where thanks to open source fixes and solutions are often quickly available)...... so it's like you said


> reading
documentation is not the only way to learn something. Again, the way you look for knowledge depends just on your personal approach.

Yes of course; I was just pointing out a particular aspect, that is documentation (in a somewhat wide sense though: documentation proper i.e. manual; help patches; tutorials...)



(anyway there is plenty of documentation about Pd,

Yeah, it is not a matter of quantity ;)

But however, I am a fan of Pd, don't make me feel like I am "on the opposite side" :)


--
Matteo Sisti Sette
matteosistisette@gmail.com
http://www.matteosistisette.com

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