Hi all,

I have been messing around with Python. I wanted to learn a programming language for a while and I found thenewboston tutorials on youtube and it just seemed to be very easy and clicked. I tried a few tutorials in various languages over the years but none of them seemed as interactive and generally simple as Python.

I have seen packages that link PD and Python and I have a very very general question. What kind of thing would you do. It's kind of a conceptual problem if you understand. Do you use one or the other as a front end and if so what is the advantage or what can be achieved in combination that cannot be achieved separately.

It's not really a technical issue but I wasn't sure where exactly to post it.

Hi,

there are a few Python/PD libraries that I've seen floating around on the internet and what you can use them for falls into two different categories to my mind.

Firstly, using the dynamic patching capabilities of PD you can write python code that will create patches. I've not used it to do this and to be honest, I'm not totally sure why you'd want to do this, but it is possible and maybe that's what you're after.

The second, which is what I've used it for, is to create long running PD processes that will need to do stuff outside of the PD environment. If you remember me posting about Patchwerk Radio, that's all done using Python wrapping around PD using the PyPD classes that Chris McCormick did.

Python means that the program can easily update databases, dynamically load patches and run as a daemon on the server.

If you want to have a look at the code, go have a look at the Github repository. https://github.com/notesandvolts/PatchWerk-Radio
Basically the PyPD class starts up an instance of PD as a sub process and then does all the communication over network sockets. pretty simple but very effective.

There are some Python Pure Data objects that allow you to use Python scripts in your patches.http://mccormick.cx/projects/PyPd/

On the flipside, you can use libpd to embed PD in your Python program.
http://gitorious.org/pdlib/pages/Libpd

@tasteforreality - ah that makes sense.... kind of metaPD. I do remember the radio. I was working on some patches and then life got busy for a while. It'll be slow enough over the summer so I will try to finish off what I was doing.

@atarikai - cool I'll look into them.