What are the different ways for creating a GUI for a PD patch (other than using canvases)?

I don't know much about this, but is there an openGL external for creating a GUI for PD patches?

Also, is there a way to open PD and a PD patch through another program. For example, if a GUI is created for PD in another program/application/C++/etc. is there a way for PD/Patch to load on the startup of the GUI? Or do you need to startup PD separately? What connections may be necessary for this?

Thank you for any thoughts =)

Hi,

@Cerupcat said:

What are the different ways for creating a GUI for a PD patch

As far as I know there are two basic ways:

1. Using canvases, buttons, sliders etc. (+ few externals like grid, knob etc)
2. "gripd", an client/server environment for building PD GUIs made with WxPython
   Check out the link: http://crca.ucsd.edu/~jsarlo/gripd/
   It is now discontinued, but fully functional. For Linux and windows only.
   Last year I set up a project using Gripd for the gui and after a short learning period
   it was fun using it. (have a look at the OuterSpace screenshot here http://alberto.zin.googlepages.com/puredata).
   If you have any question about Gripd just ask..
3. Never heard of OpenGL external for GUIs.

@Cerupcat said:

is there a way to open PD and a PD patch through another program...

Never tried it, but I think that if you are able to istantiate a "shell command" (OS command) within your
C/C++ application this shall be enough to open PD and the patch. The syntax is

 <name_of_pd_executable> <name_of_the_patch_to_load>

Cheers,

Alberto

I like to make GUIs using any normal GUI toolkit and then add a socket and handler to talk to [netsend]/[netreceive] pair.

You could try Gtk, FLTk or whatever. To give you an idea here is a crummy example that uses Trolltechs Qt builder. I changed the makefile to link in the socket. You should use a datagram, but this one uses TCP for some reason I can't remember.

You could also use an OSC connection (there's OSC bindings for Perl, Python and C++ libs if you search around)

Launch patch.pd and it should start an interface using [shell]. There's nothing in the exception handlers so if the link dies so will the GUI without a report.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/mary-mungo-midge.tar.gz

Thank you, this helps a lot.

If sending messages through the socket, are there any limitations? Are there things you can do in the normal gui that you cant do connecting through sockets?

Thank you.

Depending on the type of socket there's some buffering latency. Nothing to worry about for most applications. The nice advantage is that with IP socks you can have the GUI on a completely different machine from your DSP

Afaik some disadvantages/issues worth mentioning:

There's no equivalent to a "bang" in most toolkits, but a push-button does the job okay if you act on the button_down event.

Some of Pds GUI objects have "hidden" built in capabilities, like VU is more than just a bar graph display, it does some of the slugging necessary for a proper VU response. You might need to add a bit of extra code to some of your GUI display objects like that.

Pd slider GUIs don't have a step size, but most toolkit sliders do. This is an advantage that may give you pause for thought when redesigning a stand-alone GUI for a Pd patch.

And there's no easy way to represent graphs for arrays on a peripheral GUI. This opens a whole can of worms about good GUI design and decoupling. You either end up with a potentially slow application that shovels loads of data about when you update something, or you break good practice by calculating display code inside your GUI. There's no magic bullet. I tend to avoid fancy things like envelope graphs, meters and so on when making a remote GUI.

What is the best way to create a GUI using a Mac? I tried putting a graph on my app, but can't figure out what to do with it. Are there any tuts for this? Thanks!