[FM Discuss] Pure Data Manual issues (was Re: FLOSS manuals archive sites - and a volunteer request)

Wed Jul 3 10:04:58 PDT 2024

Hi, I'm resurrecting this discussion from over 2.5 years ago, sorry.

We have been updating the "current" document here =>
https://en.flossmanuals.net/pd-extended/_full/

What happened was that the Pd FLOSS Manual is just adding more noise and
confusion than really helping.

Pure Data has an official manual, see
https://msp.ucsd.edu/Pd_documentation/index.htm and, by the way, I am the
one in the community that has been mostly engaged in working with Pd's
manual and all of its documentation, help files, etc... you can see I am
part of the Pd team in the Pure Data repository and one with the most
commits count/collaboration
https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/graphs/contributors

A couple of years ago we did update the FLOSS manual to make it clear it
was a 'Pd Extended' manual, which I think is a good improvement, but more
needs to be made because what I've seen over the years is that people are
still very very very confused on what Pd's manual is and where to find and
still think that a parallel document from almost 20 years ago that did
represent a fork of Pd is the actual manual and official source. This is
bad, just bad.

And one thing that contributes to that is that google is still showing this
webarchive as a top result https://archive.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/

This is the archived version that makes it not clear at all the minimum
changes that were made to the current manual. And it is weird that the old
archived one shows up on the very top and on top of the non archived pd
manual document from FLOSS.

What I asked a few years ago (and I am sorry I didn't insist on it) is to
simply at least delete the archived version of the so called 'Pd manual',
which is not a real thing, and it is an outdated duplicated version of the
other  less confusing Pd-Extended Manual.

For those unaware, Pd-extended was a fork of Pd, so not the real thing, and
it is long gone and abandoned, for over a decade! It doesn't run in newer
versions of macOS, for instance. Warnings have been made that the current
Manual regards Pd Extended and is being kept as a historical document, and
that it can still be useful if you adapt the examples to the
current version of the official and main distribution of Pure Data (aka Pd
Vanilla) and install the externals used on the book.

I also mentioned how there were no plans whatsoever to start a new and
updated manual on FLOSS Manuals. The Pd Manual resides on Miller's website
and I hope that we can minimize the noise and confusion. Our (mine mostly)
efforts are just in improving the official manual that comes with Pd
Vanilla.

So, this was the context of that old discussion, let me address the
response from Mick and then reply it back.

Em seg., 29 de nov. de 2021 às 13:19, Mick Fuzz <mick at flossmanuals.net>
escreveu:

> Hi there,
>
> The archive site at archive.flossmanuals.net - is a snap shot of
> flossmanuals about 7 or 8 years ago or so.
>
> So it's not straightforward to delete things from it. And well the idea
> isn't really to keep that archive up to date as it's an archive :) I don't
> think it's a good idea to subtract from an archive. But yes better
> signposting that it is an archive and where to find up to date things would
> be really useful. I'm keen to work on that.
>

In this case, there is no point in keeping this, sorry, it's just making it
worse and I still find people confused, to this day, that this is the Pd
Manual. So please, let's just find a way to remove this archived version,
and, well, if you ask me, I still find no good purpose on keeping the more
up to date version for historical reasons since that software is dead for
so long and can't run on modern computers and OSes. If anything, I can try
and adapt the information there for Vanilla, completely out of the Floss
Manuals world, and into the Pure Data official documentation, so I'd like
to also discuss that option that we just remove 'Pd' stuff completely from
Floss Manuals. Nonetheless, this would require more discussion, time and
coordinated efforts, but for now I hope we can just remove this archived
version that is not really contributing to anything, on the contrary.

Thank you and sorry again for not following this up.

Alex

> On 29/11/2021 10:31, Helen Varley Jamieson wrote:
>
> i would say delete all duplicate copies, it just makes it confusing :)
> On 28.11.21 17:18, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
>
> Em qui., 25 de nov. de 2021 às 06:25, Mick Chesterman <
> M.Chesterman at mmu.ac.uk> escreveu:
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>>
>>
>> I’ve been working with Alexandre Porres from the pure data community to
>> correct older versions of our pure data manual and the current one.
>>
>
> Hi folks, that's me!
>
> We have been updating the "current" document here =>
> https://en.flossmanuals.net/pd-extended/_full/
>
> One thing that was confusing is that this was referred to as a "Pure Data"
> manual, but was in fact a "Pd-extended" manual. We changed the title and
> I'm editing the first introduction page. What needs to be updated there is
> the fact that Pd-extended is long gone and abandoned, and it doesn't run in
> newer versions of macOS, for instance. Warnings have been made that the
> book is being kept as a historical document, and that it can still be
> useful if you adapt the examples to the current version of the official and
> main distribution of Pure Data (aka Pd Vanilla) and install the externals
> used on the book.
>
> By the way, there are currently no plans whatsoever to start a new and
> updated manual on FLOSS Manuals, or elsewhere. Anything like that is pretty
> unlikely to happen. Our efforts are just in improving the official manual
> that comes with Pd Vanilla (now currently referred to in the edits I made
> to the "current" FLOSS manual).
>
> ------
>
> Now, we also have this archived version of the same book. And I just don't
> understand why it exists. It was actually the exact same book, with the
> same contents as the "new one". We now have minor edits to explain the
> current scenario and avoid confusions, but keeping the archived version
> still adds noise and confusion.
>
> As for possible solutions, we can make the same changes back into the
> archived one. But why keep both identical books around? One archived, and
> another not?
>
> It just makes sense to me to delete the old archived one and just keep
> this new one around, which also the same document.
>
> What do you people think?
>
> Thanks a lot for your work keeping up FLOSS Manuals.
>
> Cheers
>
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> --
>
> helen varley jamieson
>
> helen at creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.upstage.org.nz
> https://mobilise-demobilise.eu
>
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