Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

[Peter P.]

Alexandre,
I am having a hard time reading your last mail to this list because the
formatting (or lack thereof) makes it hard to decypher, which lines are
quotes and which lines are your own contribution.

Please let's keep this discussion short and not annoying. I just want to
suggest to get rid of colors of gui objects again in order to keep the cognitive
load to a minimum when trying to get the actual nformation from the help 
patches.

Thank you for considering my case,
P



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Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

[Alexandre Torres Porres]

Em seg., 21 de nov. de 2022 às 02:44, Peter P. 
escreveu:

> I think a change back to no colors


There's no "change back to no colors" :) Let me emphasize *I did
include* iemguis
when appropriate. Before that, bangs/toggles were exceptionally used on a
couple occasions. You’d have "bang" messages and “1”/“0” instead. No
sliders ever! Now I also use a toggle into a "pd dsp $1" message instead of
using two messages to turn dsp on/off, many times, this is all we have as
"colored examples". This discussion is giving the false impression that
iemguis are all over the place, that is not true! It's also giving the
impression it was always like that, but before this last change, you'd
rarely find iemguis at all.


I know this isn't really important, but I think it's funny hearing
something like “*I liked it better when bangs and toggles had no colors in
the help files, please change back to the way it was*” because… well… that
didn’t really exist :) that is a false memory, but that's it, it's just
something funny...


should be considered.
>

Furtherly changing it to white is something certainly possible to consider,
but you gotta make a case.


Em seg., 21 de nov. de 2022 às 02:57, Scott R. Looney <
scottrloo...@gmail.com> escreveu:

> modifying all vanilla help file backgrounds for a few power users used to
> stark UI design, there would have to be a lot of strong support for that
>

Yes, there'd need to be support for that, but that would also be a silly
issue to pursue. It's not the real problem that was raised here though,
which was "*colors may confuse **students*", and the underlying implication
issue is that teachers would then have hard times managing the class with
such doubts by having to explain to students they can set colors and stuff.
That's it!


I tried my best to argue that I don’t see it as something to actually worry
about based on my own experience and history of teaching Pd for 15 years to
hundreds of people (using Pd extended and help files from externals that
have different templates). I can't remember anyone ever asking or getting
confused. If it happened, it seems it was rare and I wasn't bothered to
spend a few seconds explaining it so it didn't stick in my memory. I can’t
really see how disruptive this can be, didactically. Worst case scenario,
if that actually happens (since we don't even have a real life example of
this ever happening) just give simple, quick and basic information.


It's not the first time I said this, and the fact that Extended and other
externals have a different template was a strong key point in my last
argument, but I feel it was conveniently ignored.



> I'm designing a tutorial that I use to teach for about 15
> > years and it depended on Pd Extended for over a decade. Now it

> depends on ELSE which has a more discrete template design.

> I never saw anyone being confused by the complexity, colorfulness

> or whatever... on the contrary!

All fine, I was only raising this topic for Vanilla, not wrt. to the
> valuable contributions you mention.
>

See? My whole main point of discussion was ignored as if it didn't make
sense in this discussion... I wonder if you got it.

I always found Pd-Extended to be overloaded and a bit bloated. The
> reasons why Pd has a simple and "pure" design are stated by Miller in
> several of his publications. One of the reasons was to keep the code
> managable. If I remember correctly, the complexity of Extended was also
> what brought it down in the end when Hans coulnd't keep up with the
> workload.
>

Now, I consider this doesn't make sense indeed, as it misses the point
completely. We're not discussing code base maintainability. It's not like
what I did threatens Vanilla's development... I can say I am handling this
and that's one of the many digressions I've seen that missed my points.

> Pd extended is gone but I'm still not sure we've fully got over it

Yes we are over it, because we have the Deken package manager.


Sorry, I don't think you're listening at all :) I think it's given that I
know deken, right?

No, we're not over it. People still miss it, people still use it. I said it
and it also got ignored: there are several tutorials out there that are
based on Pd-extended and many teachers, to this day, feel it's just easier
for newbies and students to use either extended or the Pd-l2ork/Purr Data
alternative, whose main selling point is exactly this! I often hear
teachers choose it cause it's "easier", "better documented" and compatible
with some tutorials (even though it has that green toggle in the help file
of [float]). Do you have data against this? Is Pd-l2ork/Purr Data not a
thing? Of course this happens even though we have deken (needless to say).
It seems you're just denying things I say without taking into consideration
what I really said - then I have to repeat my point and it gets tiresome.

Please don't take a poll on Facebook as a consensus either. I suspect

that users there might have a different profile 

Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

[Thomas Mayer]

Hi,

On 21.11.22 06:48, Scott R. Looney wrote:
i guess there might be considered a Tcl/Tk option to not have/draw 
colored backgrounds in any patch window, similar to how one can change 
the default canvas background/foreground color currently. 


A settable option / startup flag for high contrast would be great for 
accessibility.


If that is too much hassle, then clean help patches with high contrast 
items, i.e. no grey backgrounds etc. should be preferred.


Just my 0.02¢,
Thomas
--
"Theoretically, [the amount of money in circulation] is watched
carefully by clever, serious economists. In practice, all the world's
money is one big swirling, whirling pool." (Cory Doctorow - For The Win)
http://www.residuum.org/




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Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

[Dan Wilcox]

Howdy all,

without reading too far into this...

1. Alex did *alot* of work (re)structuring *all* of the help files. Thank for 
that work, Alex.

2. Sometimes people wonder why Pd doesn't change in leaps and bounds. This is 
one reason: no matter how big or small a change may be, there is always someone 
with a (valid) reason to *not* want the change. Even for end cases.

3. If the change is as much of as issue that it requires custom scripting or 
startup flags to address it for some, maybe it's worth considering an 
additional update to seriously address the issue? Stepping back, is the 
proposed change to fix the issue that much of a major issue in itself? Worth 
looking into?

I can think of numerous changes I have made/proposed where I was frankly 
annoyed by the negative feedback but, after stepping back and looking again, 
realized that I didn't really care too much about it either way and either 
changed it back or made an improvement that was different than the original 
approach.

4. I believe I've brought this up on the list before, but after a certain 
point, endless discussions about how things "should be" or what constitutes 
"consistency" is relatively moot. In the end, it comes down to writing code / 
making changes and getting those changes into the codebase, however this is 
done.

If this issue is as big as it appears to be, please, clone the GitHub repo, 
change all of the GUI objects in the help patches back to white, then submit a 
PR. The details of the technical discussion can continue there, I think.

Don't get me wrong, I am not implying that bringing up an issue is not valid, 
but really after a certain point of back and forth, things could move forward 
concretely IMO. :)

> On Nov 21, 2022, at 12:00 PM, pd-list-requ...@lists.iem.at wrote:
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 10:05:57 +0100
> From: "Peter P." mailto:peterpar...@fastmail.com>>
> To: pd-list@lists.iem.at 
> Subject: Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help
>   patches?
> Message-ID: <20221121090557.pxsmirhxjxhwn...@fastmail.com 
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Hi Scott,
> 
> * Scott R. Looney mailto:scottrloo...@gmail.com>> 
> [2022-11-21 06:56]:
> [...]
>> i guess there might be considered a Tcl/Tk option to not have/draw colored
>> backgrounds in any patch window, similar to how one can change the default
>> canvas background/foreground color currently. 
> I don't think this is a good solution. We definitely do not want more
> options/startup flags.
> 
>> but as for modifying all
>> vanilla help file backgrounds for a few power users used to stark UI
>> design, there would have to be a lot of strong support for that.
> I guess it can be done with a script and wouldn't need to be done
> manually.
> 
>> additionally the comment on Facebook users being considered less 'hardcore'
>> is somewhat prejudicial. there is quite a lot of crossover on FB with
>> mailing list users. 
> Thank you for that point.
> 
>> you should also consider putting this survey on the
>> Discord that Mike(Miguel) Moreno runs as a number of users there are also
>> on the mailing list.
> Yes, or even here:
> https://framadate.org/create_poll.php?type=autre&lang=en 
> 
> where no accounts are required.
> 
> best, 
> P


Dan Wilcox
@danomatika 
danomatika.com 
robotcowboy.com 



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Re: [PD] some gui objects with grey background in help patches?

[Peter P.]

Hi Scott,

* Scott R. Looney  [2022-11-21 06:56]:
[...]
> i guess there might be considered a Tcl/Tk option to not have/draw colored
> backgrounds in any patch window, similar to how one can change the default
> canvas background/foreground color currently. 
I don't think this is a good solution. We definitely do not want more
options/startup flags.

> but as for modifying all
> vanilla help file backgrounds for a few power users used to stark UI
> design, there would have to be a lot of strong support for that.
I guess it can be done with a script and wouldn't need to be done
manually.

> additionally the comment on Facebook users being considered less 'hardcore'
> is somewhat prejudicial. there is quite a lot of crossover on FB with
> mailing list users. 
Thank you for that point.

> you should also consider putting this survey on the
> Discord that Mike(Miguel) Moreno runs as a number of users there are also
> on the mailing list.
Yes, or even here:
https://framadate.org/create_poll.php?type=autre&lang=en
where no accounts are required.

best, 
P



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