CPrAN

The plugin manager for Praat

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CPrAN allows you to browse, install and remove Praat plugins of all kinds. With it, you can also keep up to date with the latest releases of those plugins, and make sure that the plugins you install are always in working order.

All you need to get up and running is explained in the installation instructions.

Once you are done, take a look at the documentation for how to use the current client, or read below for a quick overview. You can also take a look at the currently registered plugins to whet your appetite.

And if you are interested, you can read about the rationale of the project.

A quick sampler

Although future versions will probably have a GUI, to use the current version of CPrAN, you’ll have to use the command line. You can get to a command line with one of the many terminal emulators in Linux, the Terminal app in Mac, or by running cmd in Windows.

The text in the boxes below written with a monospaced font is text that you should write into the command line.

First step

CPrAN connects to an online database of plugins, and stores a local copy of that listing in your computer. That way it knows what the latest versions of the different plugins are.

To refresh your local database, use the update command:

cpran update

Explore the library

You can then get a listing of all the plugins with the list command:

cpran list

You’ll get a list of all the available plugins, with its name, version, and a short description. The “local” column shows the version that you have installed (or nothing, if it’s not installed), and the “remote” column shows the latest version since the last time you ran update.

Plugins that yuo have installed that are not on CPrAN will also be listed, and marked as such.

You can also search for specific terms with search:

cpran search split
cpran search utils sound

All terms will be interpreted as regular expressions (so you might have to escape some special characters, or quote them). If you type in more than one term, you can refine the search.

Once you’ve found a plugin that you are interested in, you can get more information with the show command.

cpran show utils

This’ll show you much more deatailed information on the plugin, including its name, version, maintainer, any requirements it might have, and a longer description (if available).

Install new plugins

If you like what you see, you can install it with install:

cpran install utils

When a plugin gets installed, it is automatically tested using Praat to make sure that it works as expected in your own setup.

Manage installed plugins

If a new version of, say, “utils” is released, you can use upgrade to bring your local copy up to speed:

cpran upgrade

CPrAN will check all installed plugins for any that need upgrading, and ask for you to confirm. If you’d like to upgrade a specific plugin, you can also mention it specifically, like cpran upgrade utils.

When you are finished with a plugin, you can uninstall it with remove:

cpran remove utils

That’s it!