There seems to be a bit of FUD in this "discussion."

Some things from my perspective:

1. Pd's library/path mechanism is largely oriented toward *local* libs first 
and *global* ones later, ie. download externals to individual project 
(sub)folders. I believe the centralized loading was added later on in 
Pd-extended. If we follow the "programming language model", this might be 
similar to installing a Python egg locally or globally. I don't see how 
supporting both modes of working is a problem.

2. IOhannes convinced me, over time, that the "stdpath" loading mechanism used 
by the "extra" folder is problematic as it adds too many (sub) search paths by 
default and it becomes harder to tell/control what's being loaded. The "better 
way" is for people to specify those externals paths directly, either with the 
user search paths and/or declare. There is much less ambiguity as to what's 
going on at the loss of "just put things in this place" ease.

3. As suggested by Alexandre, I wrote a PR to help address how declare search 
when using -path & -lib by having them search along user search paths as well: 
https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/205 
<https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/205>. I feel this is a much closer 
method of using declare to how other programming languages handle such things, 
ie. Lua's require.

4. The Pd Documents path (aka ~/Documents/Pd) is simply a helper location for 
beginners. It is only a regular user search path added by default (when 
desired) and does not search subfolders. Nobody has to use it and it can be 
disabled at any time.

5. Yes, the macOS hiding the ~/Library folder is problematic for many users as 
they don't know how to show it and are afraid to modify things within it. I've 
recently taught classes to beginners that are just learn gin the concept of a 
"file system" as they grew up mainly using "mobile phones" ... Plus, 
~/Library/Pd was also a "kitchen sink" std path with the issues listed in #2.

6. I've attempted to provide some solutions to various issues outlined over the 
last year regarding [declare] and folders. It would be helpful to get more 
feedback earlier on in testing / experimentation, rather well after a release. 
OTOH if I attempted to do work for free on Pd that pleased *everyone*, I 
suppose I wouldn't bother.

(7. Code talks.)

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika <http://twitter.com/danomatika>
danomatika.com <http://danomatika.com/>
robotcowboy.com <http://robotcowboy.com/>



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