@whale-av tested [mediasettings/midisettings-help] just to make sure and yeah, on mac or windows it won't see any new midi devices - like if you plug in a usb midi doot or create a new virtual port until pure data is closed and reopened, tested plugdata and reaper too just to make sure audio programs still all usually act like this on windows and mac

Losing a midi device is a major pain in any kind of live situation.

In windows and mac audio software will only see what midi hardware exists when it is first loaded - so if you plug something in after PD was opened it won't be available. It's just some legacy "its always been this way" bs, midi has been around for a very long time. Maybe midi 2.0 takes care of this? Ive had no interest in it

What I do is use a virtual port - in windows loopMidi and on mac digging deep in to the audio/midi settings to check the UAC connection to be on. on both I will rename the virtual ports to something sane like where its meant to go, or come from, or what its meant to do because virtual ports can be misused as they talk bidirectionaly (hardware midi only works in one direction - typically its an Out creating notes, ccs, etc meant to be received to a software programs In)

The magic secret sauce is combining a virtual port with a routing program, on windows Midi-OX because it remembers each instance and their filters, connections - so when I accidentally yank a usb out I can just plug it back in and close/reopen it and the software won't have any problems except maybe a stuck note. on mac midi monitor or midi patchbay it looks like midi monitor refreshes on the fly so you can set it to act as a destination, and then tick the hardware on and off as it shows up (as long as its running before you launch your audio program there's no need to mess with the virtual UAC port either).

This approach could also be done through the shell with python or some automation but it's never been a problem enough for me to look into

@blindingSlow

the UI for desktop vanilla pure data is build around tk - the same as pythons default drawing ui tkinter but with tcl for scripting, so looking at what is able to be done with python and tkinter to suit your needs would be the first place to see if anything exists before attempting to get into tcl/tk/c. pd vanilla focuses on stability and backwards compatibility and the UI tends to get refined more than actively changed.

that said Im sure any accessibility would be a help but from the sidelines it seems like things tend to fold into it after being their own project

personally being able to change the font and choose to 'zoom all windows' making is 2x helps me a great deal

so if that doesnt suit you there are also two other UI's that run on top of pure data's internal audio engine called libpd. the first ones are purr data / pd-l2ork they use javascript for the UI, they largely share compatibility with pure data vanilla when using strictly vanilla compatible objects but aren't as current so no new stuff or recent fixes and have their own suite of plugins which are not easy to extend compared to getting extras using "find externals" with vanilla/plugdata

the other one which is in more active development and really worth a look is plugdata, it has current pure data vanilla compatibility and a UI which is more like max being built with JUCE. They are very active on discord and the UI is actively being developed. Not sure what you're looking to accomplish but JUCE and the active community around plugdata probably has the most resources around it.