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3 PM 4/30/01 -0400, you wrote:

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On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Nicolas Lhommet wrote:

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Hello, I'd like to know if user's questions are welcome in this mailinglist. You all discuss about bugs or implementation of new features, that's

quite

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interesting, and I hope i will submit some externals or some bug-fix

soon,

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but do you plan to create a new mailinglist dedicated to users,

keeping this

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one for "developers" ?

I've been on this list long enought to know that the newbie questions are welcome and rarely ingored. I know that some couple of years ago i was threatening the list with a simple tutorial for total begginers but I never got to it because I didn't have access to a Linux box on a regular basis. This has now changed, I have a linux box at home and I already started writing a tutorial that is starting from zero. In a week or two (I'm doing it in my spare time, of which I have very little) I should have something that will be worth putting up somewhere. I'm sure the guys at pure-data.org will not object to putting it up there for everyone to use. I'm doing it in html right away. I will announce it when it's done.

In the meantime, examples in the pd distribution are the way to go and since I'm not a developer I will perhaps get involved in answering the newbie questions. Looks like the number of newbies is slowly growing. While I'm at it, I'd like to see a show of hands of people who need a newbie tutorial... or think it'd be a good idea. I know that most pd users migrate from Opcode Max (or other MAx flavours) and they don't really need basic stuff but perhaps there are more newbies than I/we think...

Michael, by all means publish your tutorial. I represent perhaps one other Pd constituency: that of users who'd like to get into Max/MSP but who try Pd rather than invest in a Mac. Personally, I'd rather spend my time using Pd as a musical tool and only occasionally messing with the code. But really, how will Pd reach a larger audience if more attention isn't given to making it initially accessible? A starter tutorial would go a long way.

Also, I would vote to still keep user questions going through this list.

-Ben Sommer