Pd Installers for Mac OS X
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Hey folks. I just heard that this page just got a lot more attention from its URL being in print. That's cool, but this page is a bit out-of-date. The installer does what it says it would, but Pd itself has moved on a bit. Miller Puckette's official Pd v0.37 now incorporates the major changes that were my reason for supporting an "extended" installer. Hans-Christoph Steiner has built a much more ambitious (and easier to maintain!) installer for Pd 0.37-1 on Mac OS X. James Tittle III has made contributions to Tcl/Tk to make it a lot more Pd-friendly. I would advise people to check out Hans-Christoph's work at http://www.pure-data.org/Members/hans/installers as soon as possible. |
These packages contains everything you need to get started with Pd. It installs the required Tcl/Tk libraries, Pd itself, and optional extra documentation (the pddp package). You may select which of these components you wish to install (in the "Customize Install" screen). For the beginner, I would recommend the Tcl/Tk, base, and documentation packages as the bare minimum.
These installers eliminate the need for most of the installation steps described by Miller Puckette. (You might want to make an alias for "pd" if you're planning on launching it from the command line.)
Both installers:
- include a compact Tcl/Tk installation
- divide the Pd distribution into a number of sub-packages: (base, docs, extra, and source/development)
- include an optional install of Dave Sabine's pddp because it's really helpful documentation
- automatically change the pd to root (and mode to 4755) for real-time operation
- install a double-clickable Pd.command (no icon yet) in /Applications
- hopefully allow people to get started on Pd without touching the command-line at all.
System Requirements
- Mac OS X version 10.2 or higher
- The optional (but default) "BSD Layer" install
Official Build
This is simply a repackaging of the official download on Miller Puckette's site, plus the required Tcl/Tk framework. It is provided in the interest of convenience.
Extended Package
This package is a set of unofficial enhancements to Pd, built from the CVS tree. I personally believe it to incorporate some interface, usability, and performance enhancements to the official Pd released by Miller Puckette, but cannot make any guarantees.
Some modifications in the extended package, which reflect a lot of the CVS-based work:
- Improved performance using a modification by Klaus Lebkücher, communicated to the pd-list by V93r.
- Extensive reworking of the GUI, including
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- native MacOSX-style menus and keyboard shortcuts
- proper right-click/control-click behavior
- opening of html documentation in a browser
- configurable colored patch cords and shadowed objects
- a new -helppath command-line option
- Enabled use of a ~/.pdrc configuration file (include hyphenated options, one per line)
- Creates a starter ~/.pdrc configuration file as an example and for enhanced out-of-the-box use.
- Creates and uses directories in /Library/Pd for simpler installation of Externals and their corresponding Help patches.
- Different loading of externals and libraries, avoiding crashes between two libraries that try to define the same symbol (but possibly introducing some incompatabilities: please let me know of any.)
- Modified documentation for better screen display
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pure-data/
Download
- Pd version 0.36-0, official build (3.6MB)
- Pd version 0.36-0b2, unofficial, extended package (3.6MB, 7 March 2003)
About Pd
Pd is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio and graphical processing by Miller Puckette. It resembles the Max/MSP system but is much simpler and more portable; also Pd has two features not (yet) showing up in Max/MSP: first, via Mark Dank's GEM package, Pd can be used for simultaneous computer animation and computer audio. Second, an experimental facility is provided for defining and accessing data structures.
http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html
About this installation of Tcl/Tk
This version of Tcl/Tk was built on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), and is not useable on 10.1 or earlier. It includes a patch that allows implicit key-bindings.
About these packages
I only compiled Tcl/Tk, contributed to the Mac side of the CVS tree (for the unofficial version only), and packaged the Pd components. Miller Puckette wrote Pd. There are countless CVS contributors. Dave Sabine coordinates the Pd documentation project. Tcl/Tk is maintained by a team of contributors.