If you have a static patch where you don't need to dynamically add or remove objects, building an external gui is fine and dandy. But Liam is basically saying he isn't satisfied with the tcl/tk patching interface and would like an alternative. As far as I am aware libpd doesn't have hooks for adding, removing, and connecting objects. You can't build an alternative gui. In my mind this is the most severe limitation of pd.

But I guess pd-l2ork addresses some of these issues? I know Jonathan has done a lot of work on a node webkit gui for pd: https://github.com/jonwwilkes/pd-nw