Mosc - Do you have time to make this happen?

Hyde · Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 118 G2 patch files: 2

Back in the day - us Nord users would be able to download the entire user-submitted patches as an .zip or .sit file. It was kept fairly up-to-date. I still have to download EACH one based on the date submitted. We need them zipped up into an archive that is kept up-to-date monthly or something. Hard to believe that back then there were tens of thousands and now there are only a few hundred at best - like all those guys who submitted patches frequently never bought the new gear. But for those of us who DO have it - it would be nice for us to grab an all-encompasing updated archive.

Let me/us here know. Thanks.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:45 am Post subject:

Well, it could be done... you are thinking about the pathes uploaded to this forum?
Would the patches have to be sorted first? By type, authour etc etc? What kind of information is supposed to go with every single patch file?

This can be done, but I have to look into this with Howard first.

blue hell

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:06 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:40 pm Post subject:

Hey... listen... does this mean that author name already is inside the file.. a tag..? and the file is text only.. just with an ptch extension??
Hmm.. this means that we could throw together a shockwave app that does the sorting into folders.. hmm.. we could use this serverside before the stuffing
Are there any other descriptive tags in side the patch files? Theoretically the shockwave app could generate webpages too based on tags in side the files.

blue hell · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:52 pm Post subject:

No, there are no tags in G2 patches other then the category the creator put the patch in. Classic patches have no tags at all.

And unfortunately the file format is binary (again for the G2, Classic patches are ASCII).

Although most text is readable still, I doubt that the category is available as readable text as there is a preset number of categories to select from. So I expect it to be some number somewhere, this is just a guess tho.

Jan.

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 1:52 pm Post subject:

What if everybody simple started (as habit) putting some tag in the text/notes field, such as [author:XXXX]. I know this doesn't effect current files, but it's probably good practice to start anyways. Could even come up with other tags...don't know what for, maybe "[desc:]" for a description that a file sorter could later pull out, or for keywords that go beyond what the category indicates. Then all info would be self-contained within each file, and no extraneous info would be needed. There's a lot of room for making a real database here.

Any hex/binary scan of the file presumably would still find the ASCII characters intact.

mosc · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 2:27 pm Post subject:

Hey guys, the patches are in a database. That's why it makes sense to use the forum over the email list to post and archive patches.

It would be possible to write a php script to build the zip files on the fly. Just takes time to write the code. I'd like to just keep improving the G2 patch archive page and adding the feature to pick an individual author is high on the list. I would try to keep track of the files the user has downloaded so as to not download them twice.

What I'd like not to have happen is these files getting huge and tying up our servers' bandwidth. There are some files on the NM archive site that are hundreds of MB.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 2:48 pm Post subject:

If these files are basically text they would compres well? Not? Hundreds of megs? We are talking gigs of uncompressed files?

Anyway, is there a meta info tagset in the g2 format files? If there is I could ask to my programmer buddy to make a local server app that sorts stuff. he just made some pretty advanced asset management system using shockwave for building CD-ROMs.

blue hell · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 4:59 pm Post subject:

jamos · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 6:59 pm Post subject:

Mosc is right. The biggest hindrance to getting the patch archives working is that so many contibutors refuse to use the archives.

Perhaps forbidding binary (and HTML!) content on the mailing list would be a step in the right direction.

mosc · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:34 pm Post subject:

Afro88 · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:25 pm Post subject:

Does it matter that some post on the mailing list? I had a look at the archives and all attachments are saved to: http://gladsome.com/pipermail/nord-modular/attachments/

Would it not be relatively simple to write a script to recursively scan inside this folder's subfolders for new .pch .prf .pch2 and .prf2 attachments every morning and add them to the patch archive? The could even be sorted by email address...

Then again I'm no coder, so I don't know how hard that would be.

mosc · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:35 pm Post subject:

Yes, it is possible, but the format of that archive is pretty primative. It could be done. The forum is much better because it references the discussion of the patches in the forum and keeps some sort of organiztion based on the forum the author chooses for posting the patch. For example, it's easy to find the leads in the g2patch archive. Also there is the experimental vs. completed categorization in the forum. The list just would have the patch file name and the email address of the author.

Personally, I don't have the time trying to develop a better archive for the email list. I know some users who keep their own patch archive from the email list using VB tools which are pretty good at scanning email archives. It's up to them if they want to post these archives.

BTW, that link doesn't work for me. Does it for you?

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 12:33 am Post subject:

That link returns a 403.

Afro88 · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 4:31 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 5:57 am Post subject:

A bit OT,... but

Perhaps someone should suggest to Clavia that the G2 patch format should include a sensible set of meta tags. If the file is text anyway.. addding this should not be a big deal.. and this would allow for a lot of different third party takes on sorting and patch management.

mosc · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:57 am Post subject:

I looked in that attachment directory, but it's a mess. The directory names make no logical sense and the patch files are stored in that .obj format that doesn't seem to load properly. The archive for mailman is pipermail which as far as I can tell is an abandoned program - no one is working on it and the documentation was never finished. It seems to me to be the weak link in the mailman program.

For me, it would be eaiser to parse the mail messages themselves and stash the attachments in some directories that are named appropriately. I know a list member that does this on his PC with Visual Basic and it works quite well. That's one thing people like about a list, they can organize the files themselves.

Maybe someday I'll get to look into this, but now time is precious.

blue hell · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:22 am Post subject:

Justin did have some tools for extracting patches from the list and zipping them up, are those still available maybe ?

Jan.

blue hell · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:24 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:27 am Post subject:

UH... ok... then we would need a binary refinery..

mosc · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 8:02 am Post subject:

Yes, binary. But, you can run the unix strings command and see that it is a G2 patch, and even what version of the G2 OS it is built for. But I'd never use that info in code for an application because Clavia wisely hasn't published the file specification, and they could change it at any time, thus breaking the application.

Hyde · Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 118 G2 patch files: 2

I just thought that even the ones on THIS site - experimental, finished and unfinished could be zipped up monthly...

Didn't know it was going to be this difficult. Never used to be with the old Modulars. On a number of sites you could dl the whole patch archive. If it's not possible or too time consuming - that's cool. It was just an idea Smile

mosc · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:17 pm Post subject:

I sincerely appreciate the suggestions. Thank you.