Some of you may have seen this already, but I've been working on a JUCE wrapper around Pure Data. It allows you to use Pure Data inside a DAW, while also providing a smoother GUI experience. There's also a standalone version, if you just want to use the new GUI.

It's based on Camomile (by Pierre Guillot) and includes the ELSE and cyclone libraries (by Alexandre Porres). It uses pd-vanilla 0.52 and should be compatible with most patches pd.

https://github.com/timothyschoen/PlugData

It's currently still in beta testing but should be usable. Let me know if you experience any problems!
Also let me know if anyone is interested in helping out, there's still some work to be done.

v0.4.1 can be downloaded here: https://github.com/timothyschoen/PlugData/releases/tag/v0.4.1

@timothyschoen said:

@ddw_music Thanks! There's a button in the statusbar to change the theme. I realised that it was hard to figure that out, so it has a better place in the upcoming version!

Indeed, I missed that.

I tried it with an audio effect in Linux, and MIDI generation in Windows. Both of them went perfectly! So I will use one of my class sessions this term to show the kids -- a few of them will see the potential.

This is a really excellent project, great work!

hjh

@ddw_music In the new version I released yesterday, the theme button is now in a popup when you click the settings gear icon.

Nice, love to hear that! Making PlugData a good tool for teaching/learning Pd is one of my main goals. In a while, all objects/inlets/outlets should have tooltips to guide the user without having to open help files constantly. There will also be a dialog where you can see all objects with descriptions.

On top of that, PlugData aims to be completely compatible with Pd vanilla, so anything you learn should carry over to vanilla as well.

@timothyschoen One of the primary reasons I have avoided looking into alternate pd interfaces is that wire types often do not translate well, a nice neat patch in pd can be difficult to follow in PurrData with its wiggly cables and vice versa. Any chance for a simple way to switch on the fly between pd/purrdata/plugdata wire types? No idea if JUCE provides alternate wire types.

@timothyschoen said:

@ddw_music In the new version I released yesterday, the theme button is now in a popup when you click the settings gear icon.

Oh nice, will have a look when I can.

Nice, love to hear that! Making PlugData a good tool for teaching/learning Pd is one of my main goals.

We're in a Gem unit now so I'm not sure I could switch them over just yet. But in context of, "hey look, if you use Max, you can integrate with Ableton; if you use Pd, you can integrate with Ableton and Logic and Cubase and Reaper and..." then it's kind of a nice storyline of why to use open source rather than commercial software. (In China, there's a very strong stereotype that free software must be inferior to paid, leading to piracy -- they think it's better to steal top-flight commercial software than to use FLOSS free and clear. I love it that this is one big thing you could do with Pd that nobody can do with Max.)

Btw I discovered [r playhead] -- I have a message scheduler that would be suitable for use with it, after I drop the Pd Container dependency in favor of a pure-vanilla implementation of a heap (almost there!). Would be a nice companion.

hjh

Thanks for your work, i'm loving PlugData.
But I'm having a problem here, Made a patch i want to use with 4 channels, but i can only select 2 at a time. When i select channels 3&4, it deselects 1&2 and vice-versa.
Patch works fine on PD, but looks so much better no plug data.

Im using a mid2015 macbook Pro with plug data 0.6.2 and Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56.
Thanks

@ddw_music gem support is a common request, but there are some unfortunately some problems when combining gem with JUCE. I'm gonna take a look at it soon, but it will probably take a lot of work to overcome this.

@abel-arez Thanks! I've responded to this on Discord, but in case anyone is wondering the same: this is some kind of default behaviour that JUCE plugins have when you export them as a standalone app. I'm looking into ways to disable this.

@timothyschoen said:

@ddw_music gem support is a common request, but there are some unfortunately some problems when combining gem with JUCE. I'm gonna take a look at it soon, but it will probably take a lot of work to overcome this.

Oh, it's not a request (from me). I'm quite comfortable keeping them in standard Pd for graphics.

I'll definitely introduce plugdata as a "free-libre software sees max4live and goes even more open" option.

hjh

Assuming this thread is a good place for general discussion of PlugData:

I am on Windows 10. I can't set all array properties through messages.
From the ones I tested, [style $1( and [edit $1( work. [color $1( and [width $1( do not.
Is there anything I am missing here?

@Ice-Ice Hi! What version of plugdata are you using? For me on plugdata v0.8.0 (macOS), the color and width messages to arrays seem to work.

Hi @timothyschoen! I was on 0.7.1, didn't know 0.8 was out. Just downloaded it and now it all works. Thanks a lot!

However, there are 2 things:
I had to add all downloaded externals to Paths again. That is, they were still in the original folders, but I had to add them manually in the Paths menu. Is there a way for future installers so they retain the data for Paths from an earlier installation when updating? Or how can I preserve this manually when the next update comes?

I can't create objects from the Objects Browser. The objects are highlighted when hovering the mouse over them, but they don't react to mouse clicks or pressing Return. No biggie as I usually just use shortcuts.

I love this project by the way! It brought me back to pd after a year in Max.

@Ice-Ice Yeah, that's unfortunately expected. In this update we moved the plugdata folder from an OS specific path to the user documents folder. This makes it easier to find, or to explain where it is. I also wanted to have a clean start, because we saw some issues with people using plugdata since the early days, where their settings file had gone through a load of updates, and contained a lot of old trash.

The new add menu only allows drag and drop, no clicking. This has caused confusing for more people, so next version you will also be able to click them.

And nice to hear! I also came from Max, but I wanted to work in a DAW of my own choice