hu. and the fool's opinion: of course it helps a lot if you already know max, but then, its not impossible to get into pd without it. trial&error is supported pretty good with the way pd works, i think. what i got myself a while ago, was max-object-reference.ps, which you can download off ircams site somewhere ... but of course it only co-covers the most basic objects. so i ve never looked into it that much rather than example patches. also, some general knowledge of/about computer musics might get you pretty far ...
- How similar is Pd to MAX? If I get the book on MAX
programming, will this be an aid to learning Pd?
IMHO, it would be very difficult to learn Pd without knowing MAX right now. This is starting to change due to some tutorials and help docs, but there isn't too much right now. A book on MAX programming probably won't help, because it won't cover the audio objects, GEM, etc. and will probably focus on a lot of objects which don't exist in Pd. If you can get Chris Dobrian's (sp?) Max/FTS tutorial, then that is probably the best bet.