Hi Jim, Regarding Python Opcodes, Andres Cabrera wrote an article on them in the Csound Journal here: http://www.csounds.com/journal/issue6/pythonOpcodes.html There is also an article on TclCsound by Victor Lazzarini at: http://www.csounds.com/journal/2006winter/tclCsound.html Also in general, there might be an article from the Journal or Magazine there worth referencing; the master index for both lives at: http://www.csounds.com/journal/articleIndex.html Beyond those, there is a new article to be published in the next edition of the Csound Journal regarding AthenaCL and the python opcodes, written by author of AthenaCL, Christopher Ariza. If interested, I can send a copy of the article to you off list. Your past two emails do underscore though a need for some new text to introduce users to Csound, a sort of hands-on, get your foot in the door type of book that would get a new person far enough into using Csound so that they can teach themselves (learn how to learn). Do you have a copy of the book, Virtual Sound? I used to recommend that a lot, and would do so still but with the caveat that a few things have changed since the book came out like the prevalance of CSD's, Mac moving to OSX, Linux becoming popular, etc. Still a fine book, the site has a PDF preview(http://www.virtual-sound.com/vs/index.php/content/view/13/40/). If you look at that preview, in the excerpt from the first chapter you'll see some flow charts and explanations about how Csound runs with orc/sco files, etc. Perhaps documentation of this kind would be the kind you are looking for (though updated for current Csound usage)? steven On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 7:43 PM, Jim Aikin wrote: > > I'm working on a feature on Csound for one of the music technology magazines. > I want to provide an overview that will let people know about some of the > resources, and also give them an idea what they might be able to do with > Csound. > > This leads to a couple of questions I'm hoping folks can clarify for me. > Apologies if these questions seem childish, but I'm hoping not to encounter > answers that paraphrase Louis Armstrong's famous reply to the question, > "What is jazz?" ("If you have to ask, you'll never know.") I really would > like some concrete information that I can pass on to magazine readers. > > I'm aware that Python code can be embedded in an instr, and conversely that > Csound can be run from a Python interpreter such as Idle. My question is: > why do that? Can someone give me a couple of examples of provocative musical > outcomes that might arise from doing either of the above? > > I guess I need to ask the same questions about AthenaCL, TclCsound, and > CsoundAV. And not only, "What are these things good for?", but also, more > basically, "How can one learn how to use them?" In looking at the > descriptions of the former on the Web and of the latter in the Csound > manual, I frankly can't make heads nor tails of any of it. > > Here, for instance, is a more or less typical excerpt from the manual: "With > Cswish, Tk widgets and commands can be used to provide graphical interface > and event handling. As with cstclsh, running the cswish command also opens > an interactive shell." Because I don't have a degree in computer science, > that's precisely as clear as mud to me. I have no idea what an interactive > shell is, I wouldn't know how to run the scwish command, and I wouldn't know > what to do with it after I ran it. > > Is any of this stuff documented with step-by-step tutorials designed for the > non-expert? Inquiring minds want to know! > > --Jim Aikin > > > > -- > View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Newbie-%28sort-of%29-Questions-tp17593144p17593144.html > Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > > > Send bugs reports to this list. > To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound" >