----- Original Message ----- > From: Martin Peach <[email protected]> > To: Hans-Christoph Steiner <[email protected]> > Cc: Pd List <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, 6 January 2013, 4:23 > Subject: Re: [PD] translate the Start Here! page > > On 2013-01-05 22:36, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote: >> >> On Jan 5, 2013, at 6:22 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: >> >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>> >>>> From: Ed Kelly <[email protected]> >>>> To: Jonathan Wilkes <[email protected]>; Hans-Christoph > Steiner <[email protected]> >>>> Cc: Pd List <[email protected]> >>>> Sent: Saturday, January 5, 2013 5:18 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [PD] translate the Start Here! page >>>> >>>> OK, no need to fight. This is about a version of Pd-extended that > has been a >>>> very long time coming, that had many issues to resolve, that went > offline and >>>> was unavailable at the start of the workshops I teach. I also > can't get my >>>> students to download a version of Pd-extended that isn't > finished and >>>> won't run on their machine. This is their first experience of > programming. >>>> They'll give up straight away! >>> >>> Of course. I'm just giving you a beginner's perspective; > it's my own >>> memory of that perspective that drives me to work on tools which are > currently >>> only marginally useful to me personally. The supermajority of > discontent >>> among your students tells me that this perspective hasn't changed > much. >>> By far, that is currently the fault of the software-- the documentation > is >>> currently too slim and core pd building blocks (and interface) too > crude >>> for the question "how do I find more objects" to be anything > like an ancillary >>> question. >>> >>> A static out-of-date list is better than nothing, but as far as > potential dev >>> energy I'd really rather see that put into core docs like the ones > listed >>> on the bug tracker, which are extremely lacking. That FLOSS list will > hopefully >>> become obsolete, but the help docs won't-- even if they're > dropped from >>> Pd-extended they're still publicly available. >>> >>> -Jonathan >> >> While I have agreed and disagreed with various points in this discussion, I > think Jonathan's two paragraphs above sum up my feelings on this topic too. > Jonathan has put together a really great system for help from the meta data > to > the search plugin, now we need to put actual content and meta data in our > help > patches and it'll all be findable in a multitude of ways. All this could > even be used to generate the static listing in the FLOSS manuals: just take > the > object name, then get the library and description from the [pd META]. >> > > Yeah, and we need the spec for [Pd META] to be known. > For devs maybe en entry in the externals HOWTO? >
There are some great ideas here that need further investigation. 1) Generation of static web documentation from [Pd META]. It's the only way such online documentation could be kept up-to-date as Pd is indeed a "moving target" 2) This would require [Pd META] to contain more information than just the library name, author and version. Since this is already universally applied across Pd extended, it's ready to be modified and extended. Does this sound like a good idea? Ed > Martin > > > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> > http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list > _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
