Learning new Flowstone features with SynthMaker background?

[strangeChild]

I knew my way around SynthMaker fairly well up to around the time 2.0 released but I haven't really tied FlowStone yet. Any advice on where to start? Is Ruby the main difference? Is there a tutorial for learning Ruby within FlowStone and how it interacts with the other primitives?

[billv]

Any advice on where to start?

Try the User Guide.

[tester]

Mostly the same plus much better

[strangeChild]

So no Ruby tutorial... just 90 pages of a user guide?

Any other significant new primitives (besides the data-capture ones)?

[nix]

append float array is pretty cool.
The update is really about Ruby,
which is so many things for us

[granta1969]

I don't think you'll ever see much of a Ruby tutorial here on this website because Ruby isn't designed or created by Dsprobitics. It's an independent programming language developed by a guy named Yukihiro Matsumoto. It's a blend of various languages like Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp. It was designed with the idea of being natural and easy to use. It's very popular and is gaining greater acceptance all the time. Go to take a look at the homepage for the Ruby language here: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

You can download the latest Ruby 2.0 language in a variety of styles for different operating systems. That will get you up and running and give you access to the Ruby language independent of flowstone. If you've ever programmed with something like Microsofts visual basic, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting the hang of it. You can also search all over the web for all kinds of tutorials and even on youtube for a variety of instructional videos. Once you've got the grasp of Ruby, you shouldn't have any trouble with it's implementation in Flowstone. It's probably a goo idea to get into it because if you go over to the Synthmaker website you'll find that conversations are starting to include more and more talk of Ruby code. You'll want to catch up!

And as far as the main difference between Flowstone and Synthmaker, they are basically very similar. If you install Flowstone, you simply don't install the module packs for the robotics type of stuff. I did anyway because I'm a curious sort and I find it fascinating. You can load old synthmaker *.mod files into flowstone but you can't export back to the Synthmaker standard. So remember to keep your old *.mod files backed up. The synthmaker website is still up and running as usual and it appears that for the most part the people who only want to explore the audio aspects of flowstone tend to stick to their favourite synthmaker forums even though they might be using Flowstone. Which makes it kinda difficult to share your file examples. It's kinda split the community in a awkward way and there has been a lot of talk but it looks like things have worked out ok. But you might end up bouncing back and forwards a bit confused at first about which web site to turn to. If I were you, I'd try to make things in synthmaker first because the synthmaker website is much more vibrant and active than the dsprobotics website. Then dabble with Flowstone and explore Ruby and get a taste of what it can do.

But no matter what, you should try to learn a little bit about Ruby because it's a good mental exercise which won't be in vain because you're going to see a lot of it about in the years to come.

Hope this helps a little.

Grant

I knew my way around SynthMaker fairly well up to around the time 2.0 released but I haven't really tied FlowStone yet. Any advice on where to start? Is Ruby the main difference? Is there a tutorial for learning Ruby within FlowStone and how it interacts with the other primitives?

[strangeChild]

Thanks Grant

What I was hoping to find was examples of how the language interacts with the rest of the program...

I assumed there would be some examples for learning how to use Ruby within FlowStone (for those already familiar with the rest of the program's concepts), if not a full-blown tutorial. But after having scanned the user guide it's not as daunting as I first thought. Looks like working through the concepts as it raises them would get me on track in a few hours...



PS: one last time; so there is nothing major that's been added besides Ruby and some data acquisition stuff, correct?

[Nubeat7]

So no Ruby tutorial... just 90 pages of a user guide?

good point to start or;) the best you try out all the stuff from the userguide and search the forum, there are lot of small easy to really advanced stuff you can watch and learn from, like this for example: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1121
like this you should introduce pretty fast to do easy things with ruby