wow, this is an old email.
Derek, Basically what your talking about is covered by the features of the meta-data in a PD help patch. Then in pd we can generate a list of all the installed (and loadable) objects. We can also search by keyword in the description or keywords feilds, like "symbol". I think doing this in PD is the best thing to do. As for searching for them that are not installed something similar could run in CVS and have a web-front-end.
How are people for a PDDP meeting next week? I'll probably be busy on the 29th and 30th, and Sept 1st, but otherwise free.
The index file with all the meta-data for all objects could be made pretty and printable... if someone ends up making a script that PS's a PD patch we could also use that stuff to generate a PDF with a thumbnail of the reference patch.
.b.
derek holzer wrote:
Hi HC, Adam,
Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
I am not opposed to things like PDB or ways of searching for existing objects. But if you are going to learn the object, functional examples work best. But a manual would not be a good way to search for objects.
In general, I don't really agree that a manual with pictures of patches would be very useful. The functionality to learn and experiment by changing things really isn't there.
OTOH, one thing that people in my workshops are always asking for is a list of all the objects, including the externals. There isn't really one place to get all this, except online with the PDB, but that's not a good reference when you don't have any net access. I tried maintaining a text file with as many as I could, but it's very incomplete.
My suggestion would be to make a "dictionary" of objects, maybe sorted by name, library or general function (dataflow, 3d, audio, video, I/O...), such as the directories which were made by the user community for CSound. That might be useful as a PDF or hardcopy even. The PDcyclopia?
d.