[PD-dev] tilde object rework ideas

[Christof Ressi]

>> Personally, I would keep s_n as the number of samples /per channel/. 
>> The total number of samples is simply s_n * s_nchans. Existing 
>> externals - that do not know about s_nchans - would effectively 
>> operate on the first 
>
> i think the idea is that with "s_n = s_nchans * s_length" existing 
> externals would automatically process *all* channels.
>
> that's nice if the external does not do any delays or so (as they 
> would automatically become multi-channel aware), but not so nice if 
> they *do* things in the time domain (as there would be weird 
> cross-talk between the channels).
>
> i'm not favouring any of the two approaches, just wanted to point 
> their differences.

Yup, that's exactly what I had in mind. Any object that is 
not-multichannel aware and relies on previous input/output samples would 
produce bogus results. Now, with things like oscillators, the mistake 
would be very prominent, but with filters it could be very subtle. And 
subtle errors are the worst of all :-) That's why I think it makes more 
sense for such objects to only process the first channel.

I think it's worth pointing out that this problem only occurs when the 
outlet of a multi-channel object connects to the inlet of a legacy 
object because. The opposite case - legacy object feeding into a 
multi-channel object - would be perfectly fine.

Now back to the first case: should we consider it a user error? If yes, 
Pd could even post warnings, but for this we would need a way to tell Pd 
that an object (class) is multi-channel aware. This could be done with 
an API method, with a flag for class_new(), or something else...

I'm just brainstorming...

Christof