Hi Mathieu,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I fully understand what you find unpleasant with categorization in general.
Perhaps I should have made clear that I was not sure how [print~] and
[samphold~] would even be considered to go under filters.
Following your example, I figure [print~] may have been heavily used for
tracking outputs while designing filters which lead it to belong under
the category.
Is [samphold~] also often used in building filters?
--
David Shimamoto
Hi Mathieu,
I'd also ask what's the logic in not putting all the AUDIO FILTERS
object classes in the AUDIO MATH section, and/or in not putting all
the AUDIO MATH classes in the AUDIO FILTERS section. But I don't
expect an answer at all.
May I take it that there really is no relevancy (as far as you are
aware)?
No, I know exactly what the relevancy is, I just don't enjoy it. First,
a person tells himself/herself «it would be better if there were
categories». Then the person looks for characteristic features of the
elements to be categorised, so that categories can be made. Those
features have to be easy to think about. Turns out that one of the
easiest features to think about in this case, are things like: where you
first learned the basic concept of each object class. It's a kind of
microcosm of the whole job-title social structure. Let me give an example.
[lop~] is not an operation you learn in elementary-school or high-school
math, therefore it doesn't fit in MATH. It doubly doesn't fit in math,
because it isn't taught in a Math Department. A Math Department is a
social structure that concentrates on any math concept that doesn't
belong to any other discipline already, because if Electrical Engineers
already occupy the [lop~] land, it's not only redundant for Math
Departments to claim it, it also would make Mathematicians look like
Electrical Engineers. So not only [lop~] is not part of Math Depts, but
a bunch of related topics are just on the border, so they get lumped
into a course called Applied Math, which is all made of pure theory,
it's just a form of discrimination against kinds of Math that are too
much in use by other departments. Meanwhile, Electrical Engineers would
say that [lop~] is math, except when they get distracted by a category
system. But most of all, for music students, [+~] is true math, whereas
[lop~] is something magical and not math, because [lop~] is not part of
what they learnt in courses labelled as «math» before, so it looks a lot
more «audiosome» than +~ does. This is a summary. The actual situation
is more complicated.
So basically the category system has more to do with social factors than
with anything else... and those social factors don't help seeing things
as they are. For example, something that unites most of AUDIO MATH
object classes, is that the effect only involves one instant at a time,
no memory, no feedback. This obviously excludes all four [fft~] and
[framp~] from that category system, as those are block-oriented object
classes (which could be the name of another category). But then, there
are a few expatriates that you have to pick from all over to put them in
the instant-oriented category. For example, [cos~] from the OSCILLATORS
AND TABLES category; but also, the [tabread...] classes are
instant-oriented, but they differ from all others so far, because they
use data that doesn't come from the signal. Then we could argue about
whether [noise~] belongs in or not (because it depends on how you look
at it).
I'm not completely against categories... I'm trying very hard to make
good categorisations, because it's hard for me to find a categorisation
that I can take seriously, and I'm trying to find one.
As there is a chance of it being widely circulated, I guess he may
have to issue it based on pd-help "as is", and refer to Mathieu's
comment if anyone asks the same,
At this point, I don't expect Pd's category list to change at all, so,
depending on what it is that you're doing, it may be better to just go
with Pd's categories, if you have any advantage in following Pd's
categories.
although if it was never brought up here, chances of it being asked
again may be slim.
Oh, the general topic was brought here in the past. For example, I
remember some years ago there was a thread about whether [namecanvas] is
OBSOLETE or not. It's not. (As you see, it didn't change Pd's official
categorisations).
But also, for each post to the pd-list, there may be 10 or 100 people
asking themselves the same thing, roughly speaking. You don't know. In
any case, downloads of pd-extended aren't on the same scale as the
member-list of pd-list, and then, not everybody ever writes at all.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801
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