I’ve been reading the docs and patches to try and build my own instruments. The issue I’m facing is that some of the pd objects are greyed out. I’m not how to go about building and debugging an instrument from within Pd.
If I open the existing instruments from within the folder there are greyed out abstractions and I can’t open the instruments from within main.pd and drilling into subpatches. I can only get the GUI abstraction bit but I’m not sure how I can patch abstractions together or how I can easily work on an instrument while netpd is running.
In case you haven’t found it yet, I tried to write down everything about instrument creation on n e t p d
In short, it’s not feasible to work on instruments outside their natural habitat. Work on an instrument while it is being loaded by unpatch. This ensures that all paths are set correctly so that you don’t get any greyed out objects. You can access the main patch of each instrument through the menu ‘Window’ → ‘Parent Window’. Now, the thing is, if you’re on macOS and you use the netpd.app, the kiosk-plugin prevents the menu from showing (to make the experience for netpd users [as opposed to devs] more streamlined). If you open the netpd.app, browse to externals folder and rename the folder kiosk-plugin therein to something else, e.g. kiosk-pluging.disabled. When you start netpd.app afterwards, the menu should be displayed normally.
Thank you very much! I missed the section about having the patch in its natural habitat. I’ll let you know if I have any issues developing an instrument. The “Parent Window” menu bit is the thing I’m missing I’ll give it another try. I’m only interested in using Linux but the instructions may be useful to OSX and Windows users.
Menu “WIndow” → “Parent Window” is the thing you need, then. If you’re on Linux and you don’t have the kiosk-plugin installed (you probably would know if you had), then the menu is visible as normal and you can use it to access the main window of your instrument.