Pd Documentation chapter 1: introduction

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This is the HTML documentation for the Pd computer program. Pd is free and can be downloaded from the internet; go to http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html to get it.

1.1. guide to the documentation

Pd's documentation consists of:

This manual has five sections:

  1. this overview
  2. a theory of operations, explaining how Pd works
  3. instructions on installing Pd and getting it to run
  4. how to write C extensions to Pd
  5. release notes and known bugs

In order to consult the reference and example patches, you'll first have to get Pd started as explained in this manual.

For a list of all the objects you can use in Pd, see the text file, "0.INTRO.txt" in the directory, "../5.reference". To get help on any Pd object you can right click on it; or you can browse the help patches by choosing "examples..." in the Pd help menu and looking in 5.reference.

The example patches are also available from the "examples..." item in Pd's "help" menu. The example patches appear in subdirectories named "2.control.examples", "3.audio.examples" and "4.fft.examples." Some additional patches in "7.stuff" might also be helpful.

To get started writing your own C extensions, refer to chapter 4 of this manual.

1.2. other resources

You can find ICMC proceedings papers about Pd and Gem through Mark's and Miller's home pages.

You're welcome to subscribe to the Pd mailing list or look at the archive on http://iem.mhsg.ac.at/mailinglists/pd-list/ . This is the best source of recent information regarding installation problems and bugs. It is perfectly reasonable to post "newbie" questions on this list; alternatively you can contact msp@ucsd.edu for help.

Pd links:
Miller Puckette's home page
Guenter Geiger's home page
Mark Dank's home page
Shamus McConney's Pd page
Pd page on Wonk (Klaus)
Johannes M Zmoelnig (in german)