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

Wed Jul 3 13:49:05 PDT 2024

Hi, thanks, I made a request to just delete it. Hope it's good.

Let me know how it goes, I'm not used to gitlab, I'm on github destop

thanks

Em qua., 3 de jul. de 2024 às 16:36, mick <mick at flossmanuals.net> escreveu:

> Hi there Alexandre,
>
> Can I ask you to to do a pull request on  the following git repository?
> https://gitlab.com/flossmanuals/archive.flossmanuals.net
>
> That way you can either put in an update to where you want it to point to
> or just remove content entirely
>
> Have a nice day!
> Mick
> On 03/07/2024 18:04, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
>
> 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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