Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - Proper Community site for processing w/ hosting?

seltar

Proper Community site for processing w/ hosting?
Feb 16^th, 2008, 8:43pm

OK, there are a lot of bright heads in here, and we gotta sit down and collectively create a community site.

I see more and more comments around processing-applications where people say they don't have a place to upload.. so they turn to uploading it to the free over commercialized sites which has second-counter before downloading it in a zip file..

I say we build a site, where you can easily upload new sketches, which has built in design, comments, rss, etc.
Each account will of course have limitations, but those will be figured out. Donations, and advertisement could cover the costs.

It can even span across to other languages, like Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, or just plain videos. It doesn't have to be restricted, unless that's what the users want.

A really big processing-exhibition

Anyone with me, feel free to add me to your msn: yonls [at] hotmail [d0t] com

I'm bored, therefore I program
http://seltar.org > seltar's special place
http://snippet.seltar.org > seltar's snippet palace
http://libraries.seltar.org > seltar's libraries

eskimoblood

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #1 - Feb 17^th, 2008, 11:59am

Hi seltar this sounds like a great idea and if you need a good frontend developer I'll be there.
But (and there is always a but) the guy which made codetree had a simliar idea some years ago. I've upload a bunch of sketches there and know there are all lost cause codetree shows only the logo at the start screen and thats it. So one of the main aspects should be how to assure a good finance and personal base for the project.

Andreas Köberle {eskimoblood}

fjen

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #2 - Feb 17^th, 2008, 12:37pm

... not to mention my will-i-ever-go-online builtwithprocessing.org and opencode.media.mit.edu

i think before you guys run off into another project you could help out here on processing.org. i'm in the middle of getting hacks moved here and there is a lot of other things that could be improved / added. besides that there's nothing that stands agains making processing.org a community website (in a way it already is btw).

i'd love to see a stable team of people help us. casey, ben, what do you think?

Ira

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #3 - Feb 17^th, 2008, 8:16pm

I'll chime in with support for what fjen wrote.

I think Seltar's initial idea is wonderful, but I also think there is a critical mass problem.

I recently gave lectures on Processing/my work at 2 major US universities; both rooms were packed, with folks from Art/design/Communications/Computer Science depts. At the start of the lecture, I asked for a show of hands of people who had used Processing; only 2-3 hands went up ;-(

In spite of some of us being involved with Processing for years, we are still a relatively small group. So it is probably a good idea to not spread our efforts out too thinly (until the rest of the world wakes up!)
Of course that being said... the opposite argument could also be made.

I do think a major academic conference/symposium on all things Processing would be good–albeit a lot of work–for the community.

Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art
http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=159059617X

The Essential Guide to Processing for Flash Developers
http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=9781430219798

Center of Creative Computation
Meadows/Lyle
SMU, Dallas

sojamo

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #4 - Feb 18^th, 2008, 5:43pm

interesting read. i am playing with the idea of having a common place for sketches and code snippets for some time. i know that there are much appreciated places that offer such space like snippets at seltar.org or processinghacks, as well as this forum.
there is so much valuable source code in here that i think it would be great to filter out this information, store it in a database and categorize/tag each entry (this sounds time-consuming and probably is). if this could be part of processing.org, i think that would be the most ideal place (at least for me). everything in one place, where users can then easily upload new sketches or code snippets with their current account. i am in for brainstorming, help, and start filtering the code that can be found here in the forum.

andreas schlegel / http://www.sojamo.de

REAS

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #5 - Feb 18^th, 2008, 6:44pm

This type of site would be ideal; a dream really. It could live at people.processing.org or sketches.processing.org or something else. I could use it as a place for my students to post their assignments.

I know from years of experience that it will only work if one person (or a small team that works well together), owns the project and puts tremendous effort to build it and then maintains it for years.

I think the Hacks will serve a different, but very necessary, purpose.

Regarding two sites already mentioned, Seltar's suggestion was what I was hoping CodeTree would be (why didn't that work?) I don't think the OpenCode developers want to be associated with Processing, but they really have something great started. Ideally, in my opinion, what we want is very similar to Flickr, but for Processing sketches.

st33d

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #6 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 12:51am

I look forward to the day when we will forego the word "Beta" when a project begins.

I could quite honestly say that my career and my life is currently in Beta. How many revisions it will take before my life is ready for general release I do not know. Perhaps I should go with the notion that my life has already begun and is in full effect.

steven

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #7 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 3:17am

I've had an idea very similar to Seltar's first post a while now and I've started to elaborate the structure for it.

I was thinking of bulding a site where user would have to create an account to upload their sketches either as a simple .pde or as a zip file contaning all the necessary files.

People that downloaded the file would be able to rate the code, add comments, etc.

It would be the Youtube of sketches.

I then thaught why not do the same for other type of files like max msp, quartz composer, etc.

Like I said, I started elaborating the structure and I wouldn't have much problem coding it in PHP but with school and all, I had to put my project on hold.

Good to see that other people thaught about it.
If someone decides to build it, I want to be a part of it!

Cheers

http://www.computerarts.ca

st33d

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #8 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 11:11am

^ I think that was the trouble with code tree.

I felt like I was publishing work twice because I'd put it up on codetree and I'd put it up on my own site because other people's sites go down (like codetree).

It's nice to come together like this, but it's also nice to go round people's houses and look at their cool toys. Those are the community sites I like best. A site which is like a magic bus stop.

dek

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #9 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 1:40pm

I have always seen Processing as a means to learn the core ideas and patters of programming instead of being able to create nice looking imagery. Therefore I'd like to see the main aim of any future site revisions stay focussed on learning the programming language.

To cut out any confusion I'm strongly in favor of sticking with Processing as the sole discussed language, instead of blending it with other coding languages and projects.

The whole "socializing" thing is problematic as well. Processing isn't pop media, and such systems rely heavily on the aforementioned critical mass to work out well.

A snippet/hack repository of sorts would be really useful, with a simple uploader as well as tagging and filtering options. Oftentimes

How about a "making of" section, where selected users dissect one of their projects, giving a step-by-step explanation of the individually parts. This could be immensely insightful to newbies as to showing how even the most complex piece of code evolves out of basic variables, arrays and conditions. Similar to the featured projects in the exhibition, but with more focus on the code.

It may be helpful to know more about why and how people are using Processing before deciding on further actions (hint, hint)

How to format code for discourse | eightohnine

davbol

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #10 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 5:47pm

First, I think Florian's builtwithprocessing.org is the start of something good, so that even if it's not a sketch *hosting* site, it is at least some sort of annotated link repository. The exhibition is useful, but doesn't provide much in the way of "metadata" about the linked sketches. The little thumbnails on bwp.org are quite helpful (i think) to at least get a hint of what the sketch is about.

Perhaps if there were some sort of standardized "built-in" method of including a thumbnail *with* the sketch (like the presence of a "thumb.jpg" in the data folder?) that might help. But it would have to be actively promoted if you expected anyone to do it.

Similarly you could do something like the presence of "tags.txt" in the data folder (or some sort of meta-comment tag in the source itself) to specify keywords for the sketch. Would help with something like bwp.org. Then, theoretically a tool could even exist to browse your own sketches on a local drive as well -- something that is beginning to haunt me as my number of sketches grows. (particularly those quick "just sketch out an unfinished idea to explore later" that tend to get lost!)

For example, I've started putting "!TAGS: tag tag etc" in the title comment of my sketches so I can at least use o/s tools to search for files. Now, if only I could wrap the results with a thumbnail... :)

antiplastik God Member Offline Posts: 699 France	Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin Reply #11 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 7:28pm Dave Bollinger's gallerie http://www.davebollinger.com/works/ is a good example : explicit thumbnails + well commented code, like this one : http://www.davebollinger.com/works/magnattractor/ what we're talking sounds a bit like a Wiki, don't you think?

davbol

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #12 - Feb 19^th, 2008, 11:58pm

thanks for the kind words, though i'd hardly recommend my site as a model! Cheesy

i think what may be missing is an extension of the "sketch"/"sketchbook" metaphor. as a metaphoric example: say you take your compo book and pencil out to the beach one afternoon and sketch out a bunch of ideas of seagulls. it's then relatively easy to come back home a week later and physically "flip through" your sketches and find the one you'd like to continue work on.

but if the "sketchbook" is just a folder full of folders full of code, it's not nearly as easy to do that, since you can't "see" the sketch until it runs - so it's that "flipping through" part of the metaphor that doesn't quite fit, and could (perhaps?) be the basis for further repository ideas?

seltar

Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin
Reply #13 - Feb 23^rd, 2008, 7:06pm

wow, so many good answers!

regarding st33ds second post, i was thinking that the community site in question would deliver RSS feeds, which you then could use on your own site.. even comments.. could probably add a way to include commenting on your site, so it also appears on the community site.

reas: that's what i had in mind as well.. a flickr version for processing.. modified to fit the users needs.. flickr could be implemented, as the gallery-hosting site perhaps..

What still is a big question to answer is what everybody keeps saying about critical mass.. do we need to include the option to make a flash-portfolio instead, to reach critical mass?

The ideas i currently have to this project:

I'm playing with the idea to collect all the code (that is included in uploads) in "codes", "functions" and "classes".. so one could browse for a certain function, or class.. whichever you'd need..

The comments would also (unfortunately) include captchas..

A blog should also be implemented, so one could blog about projects, or regular stuff..

Private messaging.

Sketches are basically the portfolio.. each has a title, description, thumbnail(s), date uploaded, date modified
They can be also linked up to blog-articles.

And every user has a profile, where they can add picture(s) and info.. the blog is displayed here as well (i think)

Feel free to add to this.. at least the ideas will be available for everyone to see

seltar

Feel free to add to this

I'm bored, therefore I program
http://seltar.org > seltar's special place
http://snippet.seltar.org > seltar's snippet palace
http://libraries.seltar.org > seltar's libraries

Classiclll Full Member Offline Posts: 187	Re: Proper Community site for processing w/ hostin Reply #14 - Feb 24^th, 2008, 2:51am i've interrested the PositLog, and trying to build up my own gallery. http://positlog.com/ does the PositLog give us some inspilations?