i don't think the list would have to be a lot friendlier, and splitting things into beginners and überusers would not make me happy. i've been lurking on the list for a while now, learning lots, enjoying the different angles, and happily skipping things that are too far over my head. also, by reading about topics of different kinds and levels, i'm getting a good feeling for where my own limits are, what i want to learn and what i'd rather leave to other people etc. so there, my two pennies as an absolute beginner who's enjoying the list. on to the real reason for my post.
did anything happen to the pan~ object? i upgraded to pd-0.39.2-extended-test5 a little while ago (if i'm correct this is the latest stable version, even though i got it from hcs' site rather than from www.puredata.org?), and pan~ doesn't create. i suppose i could drag it into the new app package? where does it reside in the old one? the os X search system isn't very helpful, it just doesn't show. because it's in the package?
then i was wondering whether there is a way to add more startup paths without using the -path flag, simply to keep things a bit tidy. i had some trouble adding paths to the flag, but now that i'm trying to reproduce the problem so i can quote the message i got in the pd window, it all seems to work fine.
re the tutorials (hcs and others): i'm trying to learn pd by going through msp's examples, and some other tutorials. not very systematically, as i find i've forgotten specific info when i need it. also, there seems to be quite a jump between learning about printing "hello world" and trying to get some musical results. i try to learn by looking at other patches, thinking lots, and finding / using the tutorials that will explain what i need. which usually gets me to learn about other things too. kind of circular learning (?). i find other people's patches very helpful and inspiring, but the idea of including The Patch with the distribution doesn't sound appealing at all. the reason why i'm attracted to pd is to figure out what i want and then how to get that. if i want to start producing music straight away, i'll get ableton live (which is of course a useful and inspiring application) or sth like that.
robbert
On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, robbert van hulzen wrote:
i don't think the list would have to be a lot friendlier, and splitting things into beginners and überusers would not make me happy. i've been lurking on the list for a while now, learning lots, enjoying the different angles, and happily skipping things that are too far over my head. [...] on to the real reason for my post.
That sounded like a good reason for posting already.
then i was wondering whether there is a way to add more startup paths without using the -path flag, simply to keep things a bit tidy.
If you mean using .pdsettings on Linux, then no, this is currently not tidier in any way. You can't handle more than 10 paths from the GUI and you have to keep track of how many paths you have, give them all unique names in a sequence (path1 path2 path3...), and then tell Pd again how many paths there are because it can't figure it out. In some versions of OSX you'll have this same thing as ~/Library/Preferences/puredata.org.plist which will be a XML file if you're lucky, and if not, it will be a "binary" (non-text) file that is associated with OmniOutliner, which you'll have to learn a bit in order to be able to give pd the same hand-holding as in .pdsettings; I might have been told that OmniOutliner as bundled with OSX is a limited evaluation copy that may or may not expire but I didn't verify that. In Microsoft operating systems, you'll have to use REGEDIT.EXE in a very similar way.
That's my reasons to say that .pdrc is still the main, unchallenged way to configure pd (together with .BAT files on Microsoft). All other ways ought to be deprecated, especially as Pd Extended clearly blows the limits of it two-or-three-fold.
i had some trouble adding paths to the flag,
technically, a flag is an option that doesn't take an argument. The -path option may be called a repeatable option or something, but not a flag.
looking at other patches, thinking lots, and finding / using the tutorials that will explain what i need. which usually gets me to learn about other things too. kind of circular learning (?).
As long as this is not a parallel with circular breathing (an oxygen deprivation technique) or circular reasoning (a logic deprivation technique) then I'm fine with it. :)
Maybe you want to say "hyperlearning" as in hypertext, somewhat like what you get when you let yourself loose on Wikipedia, Everything2, or the whole www, and that you have 94 tabs open at the same time and have difficulty closing them because most of them are still unread and you insist on reading them all before going to a party that started two hours ago. In the process of reading the remaining ones you try to resist the temptation of opening more but alas, ... whatever, been there, done that. ;-)
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
Thanks for your explanations, Mathieu! I can't seem to find .pdrc (i'm on mac osX 4.8). The org.puredata.plist opens in the property list editor, seems to be an .xml file. The "startup flags" from the "startup preferences" (as accessed from pd) show up labelled "flags" (class: string). Interestingly enough, arguments that I entered there before and deleted again, were still there too, labelled "path" (class: string). They were the paths to my "abstractions" and other people's "pdstuff", deleted because everything still loaded (now i understand because they were still in the file, though i didn't see them in pd's prefs window), leading me to the conclusion that folders within a folder also load... What's the scoop on that one exactly? All libs are specified in the prefs, rather than just including the path to ../extra/, but then files from subfolders in the the libs _are_ loaded, aren't they? And then [bonk~], which lives in a "bonk~" subfolder in "extra", does load, without being pointed to by a path. After deleting the paths to my "abstractions" and "pdstuff" in the Prop List Ed, with no visible changes in the "startup flags" from the "startup preferences" in pd, while leaving a path to their parent folder, "abstractions" nor "pdstuff" showed up anymore. Also, i had pd live in the applications folder, then moved (copied) it to a pd folder in the app folder. In the org.puredata.plist in the PLE, the paths to libraries for both are included. Others, eg freeverb, hcs, had only the old path: to pd in the app folder. After some cleaning up (correcting the paths, deleting duplicates), everything works, though my changes are not reflected in the preferences as accessed from pd -- "startup flags" now have no paths specified, though in the .xml file i specified "abstractions" and "pdstuff" to be loaded on startup, and they do. Would the .pdrc way make things more transparent?
so indeed, hyperlearning's continuing. not only taking the time of hanging out in the pub, but also of writing the music for a gig on thursday... thank heavens i'm an improviser ;)
-
Mathieu Bouchard -
robbert van hulzen