Ali Somay

I have recently wrote an external in Rust using median (https://github.com/Cycling74/median).

It was a quite smooth process and I'm happy with the results. 

Here is the link to the external. https://github.com/alisomay/rytm-external

- Write a help patch where the user can reach like the native externals, have tabs and examples there

- Modify the external in a way so it can have a reference like native externals

- I have seen the concept of notifications (an object can receive notifications) I don't know what they correspond to and how it would be useful for my object.

I think I'm looking for advise about the stage when your external works as expected and does what it needs to do and now,

- What are the good ways of making the user experience of it close to the native externals so it feels as natural as possible to use.

- Are there common unspoken standards in the community about UX of externals.

I'd be glad if you could share some best practices from your experience related to this topic.

I have recently wrote an external in Rust using median (https://github.com/Cycling74/median).
It was a quite smooth process and I'm happy with the results. 
Here is the link to the external. https://github.com/alisomay/rytm-external

What I don't know how to do yet is,
- Write a help patch where the user can reach like the native externals, have tabs and examples there
- Modify the external in a way so it can have a reference like native externals
- I have seen the concept of notifications (an object can receive notifications) I don't know what they correspond to and how it would be useful for my object.

I think I'm looking for advise about the stage when your external works as expected and does what it needs to do and now,

- What are the good ways of making the user experience of it close to the native externals so it feels as natural as possible to use.

- Are there common unspoken standards in the community about UX of externals.

I'd be glad if you could share some best practices from your experience related to this topic.


I have recently wrote an external in Rust using median (https://github.com/Cycling74/median).
It was a quite smooth process and I'm happy ... 

the-best-practices-when-writing-externals

a proper bump for this topic( as it was posted during the holidays, i hope it doesn't get lost in the shuffle).

Rodrigo Constanzo put together quite a professional package for the karma~ object, you could see that in the package manager for an example, he'd have great advice too(i think you can take any help patch you find and start with that, when you 'save as' be sure to choose to save as .maxhelp), you can get to the help patcher's editing/root-patcher by right-clicking on the empty space in the tab-section:

Screenshot 2023-12-27 at 7.50.13 AM.png

the way i understood it, i can just duplicate one of the subpatchers in the 'root patcher' and then rename it to create a new tab with its own patcher.

Screenshot 2023-12-27 at 8.10.24 AM.png

i, too, would love to see some 'best practices' listed in this thread(we can look through the online 

to see what's possible but it isn't organized into a clearcut form where people will know all the 'best practices' for user-interfacing and learning objects... for example, when i coded the karma~ object for Rodrigo, i had trouble understanding how to get attributes properly initialized since the way to do it changed across a few versions of Max long ago(eventually got it sorted but it was a stupid waste of time, and i'm not sure i'd remember the solution now), and then i've also forgotten how to create a proper 'reference' file that is linked within the Max app overall, etc... small things like this are hard to find the answers for, here on the forums searching through hundreds of threads... a general thread where we can find them all in one place would make things easier).

a proper bump for this topic( as it was posted during the holidays, i hope it doesn't get lost in the shuffle).
Rodrigo Constanzo put together quite a professional package for the karma~ object, you could see that in the package manager for an example, he'd have great advice too(i think you can take any help patch you find and start with that, when you 'save as' be sure to choose to save as .maxhelp), you can get to the help patcher's editing/root-patcher by right-clicking on the empty space in the tab-section:

i, too, would love to see some 'best practices' listed in this thread(we can look through the online SDK
to see what's possible but it isn't organized into a clearcut form where people will know all the 'best practices' for user-interfacing and learning objects... for example, when i coded the karma~ object for Rodrigo, i had trouble understanding how to get attributes properly initialized since the way to do it changed across a few versions of Max long ago(eventually got it sorted but it was a stupid waste of time, and i'm not sure i'd remember the solution now), and then i've also forgotten how to create a proper 'reference' file that is linked within the Max app overall, etc... small things like this are hard to find the answers for, here on the forums searching through hundreds of threads... a general thread where we can find them all in one place would make things easier).

The best practices when writing externals