Hi Forum,

I just started to look into PD after extensive use of Max. Especially the RPi integration seems very interesting.

However, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around some basic stuff. For instance, I want to use the [date] object to retrieve d/m/y. This does not appear to be one of the internals, but I have seen it listed as an external (Vanilla extended?). But then when I look around I find lots of 5 year old pages, and for example Pure Data Computer Music on Sourceforge which offers a lot but not simply what I am looking for.

It feels very noobish to ask how this works, I must be missing something obvious, but I think I need a little help with starting to find my way around and then I'll be fine.

Thanks!

@phata [date] is part of the zexy library, and you can get it for vanilla by clicking "help" "Find externals" in the Pd terminal window (this uses the Deken Plug-in to load externals).

If it........ [date] ...... is not there or refuses to work then you will be forced to use Pd Extended, which comes with all the externals that were available at the time..... and date..... ....that it was last compiled.....

And they all work...!
David.

[date] ships with the rest of the "zexy" externals in Purr Data:

https://git.purrdata.net/jwilkes/purr-data#downloads

Purr Data attempts to ship all the common external libraries so that they are available (or at least "declare"-able) when you run it.

Hi, thanks both for your help! I got it working in Purr Data. But after installing the zexy library i did find the [date] help file, but not the actual external (also it didn't work in the help file). I noticed more help files without accompanying externals.. weird (?).

Another question on Purr Data: where do I find a complete list of the included externals? In 'Help > Quick Reference' it seems only the original PD externals are listed.

Thanks again

Hi
when you launch Purr Data, the console window will display "libdir loader added : xxxx" (such as cyclone, zexy etc). Also, you can use Edit/Preferences/Startup to see a list of loaded libraries.

HTH
Brendan

If you navigate to "Edit" -> "Preferences" then choose the "Startup" tab, you can see where the path to your "extra" directory is.

If you peruse that directory, you'll find all the external libraries that Purr Data ships.

Not all of them are loaded by default. Many are there only to provide backwards-compatibility with Pd-extended. Unfortunately, Pd-extended shipped with a lot of libraries that were essentially cloud storage for some of its users' patches and externals.

There's also a patch called "external-tests.pd" that attempts to load every single library and create every single object that ships with Purr Data. Atm it tests well over 2,000 objects so I'm not sure a list of those names is particularly helpful.

Hi jancsika
can you point me/us to the 'externals-test' patch please?

Sure, it's here:

https://git.purrdata.net/jwilkes/purr-data/blob/master/scripts/external-tests.pd

In the CI I run it with the following flags:

pd-l2ork -noprefs -nostdpath -nogui -nrt -noaudio external-tests.pd

But the output really isn't for general consumption.

If you want something more user-friendly I can probably cook up something for the help browser.