Not really Off Topic but anyway...
Is it time for a real, neat, fully functioning Pure Data Wiki
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It could be useful to have a place to collect patches or links to Pure Data examples, use them to illustrate different synthesis techniques, or applications of PD and so on. Some of the threads on this forum provide a good overview of subjects like reverb, granular synthesis or handling midi polyphony and it would be great to be able to summarize what's been worked out here and put it into a neat form somewhere.
Does this exist already somewhere? Would people be interested in contributing to something like this? Would it be useful?
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Starting a Pure Data Wiki (Database/Examples Collection)
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@beem The idea to have everything organized in a more advance fashion is good, but to be honest the cost of maintaining such a system is time consuming and needs a very active community. A lot of users who are new to PD just want quick access to hard work material that takes huge amount of time and knowledge to make, without spending time to learn it. So by making the process of getting various patches more easy will not encourage learning. This trend of having everything "at you fingernail" without work, reading or curiosity is like a modern fancy software interface that looks good but lacks serious software engineering principles. I also think that a serious backup of this forum is a smart move in order to keep years of hard work intact. The material of this forum contains years of hard work, devotion, passion, shared by very special people and it will be a great lost if we don't preserve it in a form or another.
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@Boran-Robert Something will always be available: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/
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@ingox Good.
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It seems to me that part of the issue is how disconnected all the various PD communities are.
There's the mailing-list which has its regulars,
There's the Discord and the community there.
There's this site.
There's all the users who put their stuff on puredata.info.
There's the subreddit.
I didn't even know there was an IRC.I haunt all of those places (except the IRC), and while I know there are others who also spend time in each, I also know that there are folks who really just stick to one or two.
I think there are more than enough PD users to make and maintain a wiki, but I don't think there are enough PD users in any one single place to actually achieve it. This strikes me as being one of the major things that holds PD back.
Take, for example, the Monome community over at lines. That community is small in terms of raw users, its centered around really esoteric and expensive gear, but its also absolutely thriving because they're not dispersed across 6 different platforms.
I don't know. I guess I wish the PD community had a more obvious center to it. And a wiki would work only if it were located at/near that center. But damn, I really want it. I think it's an amazing idea and it would solve some serious shortcomings.
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@lordgreekfolder Here is an overview: https://puredata.info/community.
Isn't puredata.info already a wiki?
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@ingox thanks, I didn't know about that page.
I guess what I meant though is that compared to something like SuperCollider or Monome, PD seems to be fractured into many distinct communities. It's great that that page exists with all those resources, and it's also great to have so many different options for people's different preferences. But I sometimes wonder what could happen if, for example, everyone on the PD mailing list also hung out on this forum. When you have a community dispersed into so many smaller pieces, I think there are bad side effects. Like, for example, certain knowledge or sets of expertise that are well-represented in one area, like the Discord server, but not in another, like the IRC.
It seems like, especially if you're new to PD, that this can be a major hindrance.
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@lordgreekfolder Ok, if you start a wiki i provide some patches or something
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@ingox So, how is it going to work?
Someone needs to work out a hierarchy and format with appropriate page titles.
Permissions will be needed to keep it under control.
I think it will need to be quite constrained or it will just become a parallel of this forum.
It will need to be kept very tight.
References at the bottom for useful follow-up like in Wikepedia, but restricted concise information for each page or it will run out of control.
Any links will have to lead to a concise sensible page too......... not a discussion.I would suggest starting with all known Pd objects, especially as the documentation is already mostly done in their help files.... that currently you only get to see once you have created the object....... that you might not know exists.
So maybe the same hierarchy as Pd..... math, audio, audio math, gui, ..... as in help-intro.pd... ?
But the elephant in the room is the tilde~. A wiki which doesn't use it as a Boolean operator?
David. -
Hi,
I'm studying PD from about 1 month. I'm projecting a part of my new live setup with PD, therefore I think i will stay here for a long timeI was just thinking how could be useful to have a wiki for pure data, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find this thread!
I must say that, to find information, I have found myself confused several times with the various platforms of Pure Data!
So I think a wiki can be a great connector and glue.Each person will be able to contribute, and I believe that a structure of this kind has a great potential.
For example, in these days I felt the need to have a manual for the entire external librarys, to be able to easily browse what's inside all that. Currently it seems to me that there is none of this on the web. Also here, the wiki could be very powerful (for a section dedicated to externals/deken, I would be happy to work on it).
I think that initially it is good to leave registrations open to contribute, to encourage people to help (but certainly in the future, you can always change). I have seen many wikis work fine with open registrations.
So, does anyone have an idea for a server that we could use and try to start?
I believe this pandemic period could be perfect for starting this project!p.s. there are other PD communities not mentioned by @lordgreekfolder , like Facebook (really big) and Telegram.