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

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> however: intuitivly, i would consider an object which lots of mixed
> inlets to be badly designed anyhow: i think it is quite ok of pd that it
> enforces some thought on how to create the objects API (which
> inlet/outlet does what), instead of "just allowing anything".

It's not "thought".

Do not mistake "thought" and what has simply happened.

Just because there's a restriction in place doesn't mean that it's been 
designed for your own good.

The only reason why a regular inlet can't have two methods registered to
it, is because that was how MAX was designed in 1987, and it was designed
that way because:

 * object-oriented theory doesn't know about inlets so the extra
   (non-left) inlets concept got inserted as some sort of automatic
   messagebox so that it appears that there's only one inlet at the level 
   of defining methods.

 * Pd (and almost all OOP languages) doesn't allow dispatch based on type
   of argument, so somehow the type of $1 got duplicated as a selector,
   which leads to all sorts of troubles as we've noticed...

That's it.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada