Some of you may have seen this already, but I've been working on a JUCE wrapper around Pure Data. It allows you to use Pure Data inside a DAW, while also providing a smoother GUI experience. There's also a standalone version, if you just want to use the new GUI.

It's based on Camomile (by Pierre Guillot) and includes the ELSE and cyclone libraries (by Alexandre Porres). It uses pd-vanilla 0.52 and should be compatible with most patches pd.

https://github.com/timothyschoen/PlugData

It's currently still in beta testing but should be usable. Let me know if you experience any problems!
Also let me know if anyone is interested in helping out, there's still some work to be done.

v0.4.1 can be downloaded here: https://github.com/timothyschoen/PlugData/releases/tag/v0.4.1

New version out now with support for externals in the standalone. Also, vanilla pd patches should look much better now.

New version is out with many new features and fixes, including a light mode to improve pd compatibility, relative grid, and the latest version of ELSE.

@timothyschoen Thanks for the great work! I tried it with Bitwig 3.2.8 on Windows 10, opened a patch and heard sound.

Some observations:

Selecting help from the right-click menu worked on some objects, but not others. For example, list and netreceive showed the help file, but metro and phasor~ gave message "Couldn't find help file."

Arrays were retained in my opened patch, but editing the values with the mouse was inconsistent, sometimes values would move to the cursor position and then jump back to their previous position. One array showed the dots for values and the other showed nothing but seemed to have correct values being played. Names of the arrays weren't shown, and I couldn't find a way to edit the array properties.

I probably shouldn't expect to receive OSC data from my Android phone, but I tried sending a "listen 8000" message to netreceive and got the error "netreceive: listen failed: The operation completed successfully."

I find this an exciting project and hope it continues to develop.

@plusch Thanks for trying it out! I'll look into the help files problem, I've heard that ELSE help files are also not being found. I'm aware of the array problem as well. I hadn't tried OSC yet, good to know that it's broken, I'll check it out!

There have been many interesting developments recently:

Document browser for opening patches and helpfiles:

Deken support:

Control automation from PlugData, with a button to create the receive object for you:

Object argument suggestion:

Hover messages for inlets/outlets:

v0.5.1 is out now with all the features shown above!

Truly awesome project @timothyschoen !
I installed the previous version last week and had an overall good experience with basic patches, with some minor issues that hopefully I find time to post to the tracker in github.

In any case, thanks so much for doing this! Among the previous attempts to make alternative GUIs for Pd, yours stands out.
I was almost moved when I run it on my laptop after using Pd for 20 years, this is something to behold eheheh

While for long-time users like me it may be tricky to completely switch from Pd-Vanilla to a new GUI, I think the kind of work you are doing will be very helpful to Pd in the long run, especially in helping beginners not to feel intimidated by the trademark, stern GUI of Pd and instead enjoy its community, potentials and quirks
And I can think of several use cases where a user who normally works in Pd-Vanilla would find useful to have the possibility to transfer patches to PlugData: like, creating easily readable patches and plugins for third party use, or artwork packages ready for exhibitions, etc... exciting.

I am curious about the strong resemblance to Max; is it something planned for a particular reason or it was merely used as a quick reference?
It would be even nicer to have a GUI that is unique to Pd, but that's just an aesthetic point lol Nothing to take away from your work!

@MarcoDonnarumma Thanks! I did take some inspiration from Max, it was kind of an obvious inspiration to use. Whenever I wasn't sure about GUI behaviour I'd see what Pd does and what Max does, and pick what I like best. In some cases I went for something different, like the sidebar that tries to show the correct panel without having to click anything. A thing that comes from pd is that objects stick to your cursor when created from a menu. It might be nice to create a more unique/pd-like look, but at the same time I'm quite satisfied with most of the UI right now.

Another reason to take inspiration from Max is that the Max user base is big, and not all of them want to use Ableton

@timothyschoen I see, thanks for the explanation of the process, it makes sense.
Look forward to dive more into PlugData.

@plusch Array component has some properties and works much better now!!

hello there !

on the github, you mention on the release of v 0.61 _ _ _

" IMPORTANT: to ensure this version works perfectly, I recommend removing PlugData's folder file located at
Mac: ~/Library/PlugData/
Linux: ~/.config/PlugData/
Windows: %APPDATA%/PlugData/ "

u mean copying to another place ? or do you mean totally erasing it ? or do you mean just that the user doesn"t have to save patches in there but another place ?

thnx !

@pajzd Hi! You are correct, this is the folder where abstractions are saved, so if you have put any of your own abstractions in there, you might want to back them up. Other than that, you can delete the folder!

I've since modified the way this is handled, so in the future it should be fine.

@timothyschoen Check this video about your plugin (in Bitwig):

@EEight I've seen it, it's a nice introduction to PlugData!

SoundSimulator's video was also very nice:

This has only just popped up on my radar... impressed!

I have a brief question: How does one enable dark mode? I've done Reaper --> add track --> add plugin --> PlugData --> Settings icon --> Pencil (editor) --> and here, the font and color pickers work, but the Dark and Light buttons do nothing when clicked.

BTW Ubuntu package installation failed (PGP error... not quite having time for that today) so I just symlinked to the vst3 folders in the github release.

BTW BTW I was able to hack the colors by setting Theme="0" in Settings.xml. That gets me going for the time being.

hjh

@ddw_music Thanks! There's a button in the statusbar to change the theme. I realised that it was hard to figure that out, so it has a better place in the upcoming version!

@timothyschoen said:

@ddw_music Thanks! There's a button in the statusbar to change the theme. I realised that it was hard to figure that out, so it has a better place in the upcoming version!

Indeed, I missed that.

I tried it with an audio effect in Linux, and MIDI generation in Windows. Both of them went perfectly! So I will use one of my class sessions this term to show the kids -- a few of them will see the potential.

This is a really excellent project, great work!

hjh

@ddw_music In the new version I released yesterday, the theme button is now in a popup when you click the settings gear icon.

Nice, love to hear that! Making PlugData a good tool for teaching/learning Pd is one of my main goals. In a while, all objects/inlets/outlets should have tooltips to guide the user without having to open help files constantly. There will also be a dialog where you can see all objects with descriptions.

On top of that, PlugData aims to be completely compatible with Pd vanilla, so anything you learn should carry over to vanilla as well.

@timothyschoen One of the primary reasons I have avoided looking into alternate pd interfaces is that wire types often do not translate well, a nice neat patch in pd can be difficult to follow in PurrData with its wiggly cables and vice versa. Any chance for a simple way to switch on the fly between pd/purrdata/plugdata wire types? No idea if JUCE provides alternate wire types.

@timothyschoen said:

@ddw_music In the new version I released yesterday, the theme button is now in a popup when you click the settings gear icon.

Oh nice, will have a look when I can.

Nice, love to hear that! Making PlugData a good tool for teaching/learning Pd is one of my main goals.

We're in a Gem unit now so I'm not sure I could switch them over just yet. But in context of, "hey look, if you use Max, you can integrate with Ableton; if you use Pd, you can integrate with Ableton and Logic and Cubase and Reaper and..." then it's kind of a nice storyline of why to use open source rather than commercial software. (In China, there's a very strong stereotype that free software must be inferior to paid, leading to piracy -- they think it's better to steal top-flight commercial software than to use FLOSS free and clear. I love it that this is one big thing you could do with Pd that nobody can do with Max.)

Btw I discovered [r playhead] -- I have a message scheduler that would be suitable for use with it, after I drop the Pd Container dependency in favor of a pure-vanilla implementation of a heap (almost there!). Would be a nice companion.

hjh