Hallo, mark hat gesagt: // mark wrote:
IF we want PD to be used outside of the hobbiest community then it does need serious work on things like installing,look and feel, documentation and configuration (midi,soundports etc). For most casual users these things are not easy or perhaps present to high an entry cost.
However for all of us these things are not a problem (otherwise we wouldn't be here).
So the question is - Do we want a wider audience? Judging by the responses to this discussion I would say the answer is no - no one here is prepared to do the (lets face it fairly dull) work of making this a proper product.
If *you* (whoever you are) want it to be a proper product you will have to do the work yourself or convince someone else to do so. The rest of us have a tool which meets our needs.
I'm a fairly experienced Linux user with several years of using this OS. Still I'm very much a casual user if it comes to compiling stuff. I'd rather install a binary/distribution package instead of compiling from source, except when I *want* to compile because I want to change or adapt software at source level. But I will never compile a thing like Open Office.
So a lot of the things you said make life easier for users *and* the developers as well. For example the CVS repository on SF is one really great things, because it has made installing externals a breeze, and if you're a Debian user, it is even easier because of the pd-externals, pd-foobar packages on debian.org
For a Debian user, installing Pd and most of the externals is only a single command away. Having binary packages of the externals for other OSes is only a question of time. And Adam's work shows (I think) that installing Pd on OS-X can be made easy as well.
Another thing might be the level of support this community can give. This is not the max-msp community and there isn't an enterprise build on Pd.
ciao
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__