[PD-dev] Re: avoiding reuse of vectors in multichannel external

[Kjetil S. Matheussen]

IOhannes m zmoelnig:
>>
>> 2)
>> what i could glean from the docs/pdf's there is no way a signal inlet
>> could be used for message-input at the same time, is that correct or  is
>> there a hack to get this work? i specifically need the left-most  inlet
>> to set the objects state etc. what the standard way of dealing  with
>> this in PD?
>
> i don't know which docs/pdf's you are exactly reading, but pd has no
> problem with the first (leftmost) inlet accepting both signals and messages.
> there are plenty of externals that do that. have a look at [fiddle~] or
> [bonk~].
>

No, this is a real problem. I just made a very large patch that based
around using the snd external. And because there is no way (as far as we 
know) to let an inlet (except the first one) accept both signals and 
messages, each time I needed another inlet, I had to manually move all 
connectors one step to the right, which made me not add as many inlets as 
I wanted to. (There are, however, a workaround, which is to let each 
even-numbered inlet be for messages, and each odd-numbered 
inlet be for signals. But thats just a hack.) Anyway, theres no rational 
argument why pd shouldn't be able to support both messages and signals on 
the same inlet, its probably just programming time that is the argument 
against. So this is a perfectly valid complaint about PD. (By the way, a 
bit different approach to solving this problem is to let 
message-inlets be placed on the vertical line of the object-box, and 
signal-inlets be placed on the horizontal line of the box. :-) )