News » 02 April 2009

Does Pd Need A Ruby Object

I'm pretty much committed to Max/MSP as my platform of choice for patcher-style visual programming environments, but I realize there's people out there who are going to go with the free option instead of dishing out money for commercial software. From what I've heard in the blogosphere, Pd seems to be the typical choice.

It's apparent that my ajm.ruby object for Max could probably be ported to Pd, and I bet some people out there might be eager to have a full-fledged Ruby scripting system for Pd. But I am not a Pd user and don't have enough personal interest to take the time to learn Pd enough to do the port. One complication is I've built a lot of Max-specific hooks into ajm.ruby that would need to be removed or converted to something that makes sense in the context of Pd.

If there were enough interest I would be willing to help make something happen. What would probably work best is if someone who knows Pd external programming, especially Java programming with the pdj object, would be willing to attempt the port. I would offer assistance in whatever way I could. But I don't want to take ownership of such a project, it's hard enough staying on top of my own goals (hence the big gap in blog postings on this site). If no one out there is willing to do that, I do code for cash :)