[PD] dealing with arguments and inlets

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Feb 4, 2006, at 4:25 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> On Sat, 4 Feb 2006, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>
>> That's a tricky question: What would a user of these abstractions  
>> expect
>> [*_argument] to output if s/he creates an abstraction with the  
>> argument
>> [myabs foo]? Should "foo" be a "foo" or a "symbol foo"? Both cases are
>> quite usual, but they look the same from the argument handling.
>
> Pd's pseudoobjects include floatatom (Ctrl+3) and symbolatom (Ctrl+4).
> Note that both of those are named with "atom" in the name. Those names  
> are
> part of the Pd file format. The symbolatom boxes output "symbol foo"  
> and
> not "foo", because they output something that can be auto-converted to  
> a
> 1-element list.
>
>> For consistency I would say: If the user wants "foo" but not "symbol
>> foo" s/he shouold take care of that manually with [list trim].
>
> I agree.
>
>>> This gets into another definition question.  What is the type in this
>>> message: [word(
>> It's a symbol. Oh, no, wait, it's not, "symbol word" would be a
>> symbol, or rather, a symbol-symbol. [word( then would be a
>> non-symbol-symbol. ;)
>
> There are "atom messages" which is any message that has the "list"
> selector and one argument, or anything that can be cast to/from it.  
> This
> includes messages with "float" "symbol" "pointer" selectors.
>
> There are "listlike messages" which may be any message that has the  
> "list"
> selector or can be cast to/from it. This includes atom messages and the
> bang message.
>
> The rest may be called "nonlistlike messages" and everything together  
> may
> be called "messages".
>
> Your "non-symbol-symbol" could be called "nonlistlike messages without
> arguments" (or "messages without arguments" in order to include bang),  
> but
> it wouldn't have that Alice-in-Wonderland sound that  
> "non-symbol-symbol"
> has.

I outlined these categories because each one has distinct behavior, so  
each one should have a distinct name:

bang
float
symbol
pointer
undefined element
list
undefined list

Data types are different than messages.  Anyone of these categories can  
be a message, and they can stand alone without being a message, like in  
a symbolatom or floatatom.  When you have something stored in a  
[symbol], [float], [any], etc. then its not a message, but just data.   
So I don't think we should definite data types in terms of messages.

The terms that you come up with work as general categories, but they do  
not help in defining the very specific types I listed above, as data  
types, not as messages.  (FYI: Miller uses the terms "out-of-band  
messages" and "metamessages" in list-help.pd).

That still leaves "undefined element" and "undefined list" as, um,  
undefined...

.hc


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