Frank
thanks for the reply.
I say I don't need Gem, as I assumed it was for video processing, and my intentions for pd are entirely audio. As for extended, I'm probably doing the wrong thing in trying to jump into pd at the deep end, but all the applications I have in mind for it involve things I've researched and found to be needing externals. pd-extended allows me to load the examples with the help files and learn in the way I'm used to, at least when I've had it working in the past. In other words, I'm wanting to build on, learn about, hack about with existing patches which do some of the things I want to do, and this requires externals. (the things I have in mind are loopool, livebuilder, cubemixer and integration with the reacTIVision based table I've been using). Now I know vanilla won't suffice for these things, but ... baby steps.
I'll take your advice then, and start with compiling vanilla. I'm not new to compiling, and I don't expect any problems with vanilla, but I suspect pdx is a little too complex due to the way it seems to essentially be a collection of nested makefiles. I still, however, would love to have an answer to that basic question, and that is, is the pd-extended source package from sourceforge sufficient, or does one need to checkout the autobuild from cvs? It's a mystery to me, but I'll find an answer one way or the other.
-michael