I will try to document more of how the sample selection works a to z for you as for both of those responses I was away from my computer/organelle and wasn’t able to give a detailed response.
One question I have is are you new to the Organelle and it’s conventions or are you new to Pure Data in general? Most of my complaints in regards to work flow is more on Pure Data and not necessarily on C&G themselves.
I do understand your frustration with the fact that Pure Data is a definitely odd language when compared to typical text based languages with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, using ctrl f to find, and other nice features. It also doesn’t help that everything is just a black and white box with black lines connecting everything which can make everything look the same. A couple of those have been addressed in Max which I have been using more of but I still like some conventions of Pure Data as it is one of the only programming languages I feel extremely confident in.
In regards to your complaint about how there should be dedicated functions like the Akai Force and Tempera, these devices were designed to serve specific musical duties and it is a little unfair to compare it to the Organelle as it’s goal is almost the exact opposite. The Organelle is basically a Raspberry Pi with an audio interface, microphone, some buttons and knobs, sometimes a speaker, and MIDI implementation that can interface with Pure Data. That’s really it. It’s daunting but I personally find it exciting but it does throw you to the sharks more so than other established languages with extensive documentation like the ones you mentioned.
There is still a wealth of resources that span the last decade on Pure Data and I can definitely link you some that I have found helpful in learning it but the other great thing is you don’t have to do it the C&G way of making pathces. I know there is the O-Knob system which was developed for the reason to address the issue of a ready made page and knob handler. They also have made a Graphics Demo patch that show cases how you can interact with the OLED display and it’s well documented.
There’s no limits but at the same time C&G aren’t really in the business of giving lessons on Pure Data which is I think is primarily responsible for the weird and wonky ways of working. I will say some of the ways C&G have implemented their shortcut system and other code can be difficult to understand as they employ lots of sends and receives so it requires bouncing through different subpatches to find what is going where. They primarily use their in house ways of doing things to create instruments and creative effects for their own stuff but I hardly ever use it except for some useful code and abstractions they’ve made every once in a while.
One more thing I’ll mention is in regards to Orac and why C&G don’t lean into it more and produce more content on it. I haven’t spoken to Chris, Owen, (C&G) or Mark (Orac creator) on this so this is all speculation. C&G have made content on how to use it and have featured Orac, Orac 2.0, and more recently Orhack. It’s not extensive and Orac is deep. Quite deep. But they have made an effort to bring it into the Organelle ecosystem. It also has it’s own conventions that it abides by and uses. Not to toot my own horn but I am pretty familiar with it so if you have questions, feel free to PM whenever.
I also don’t expect C&G to continue work on Orac as it’s GPL and they have no financial incentive to work on it as they can’t commercialize it (to my understanding, not a lawyer) unless they believe that is what the Organelle should become and will help sell more product. I don’t think that Mark would be comfortable if C&G hijacked his work and made that the base of the Organelle ecosystem, nor would I think they would even want to. They clearly have tons of fun making their own weird creative patches of their own and have been hard at work creating new and innovative instruments like 5 Moons, Eyesy, their Microphone, and more!
Last thing I’ll say is the most powerful aspect of the Organelle is the community aspect. I usually try to always pop in on a forum post and help out whenever I can and there are many others who help too! I will be sure to address your specific concerns on how I have dealt with the filesystem navigation with screenshots when I take a closer look at what I did again lol.