[PD] dealing with arguments and inlets

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> The way I have been thinking is that the first inlet is the general
> inlet, and it can accept many types of messages.  Then the second inlet
> lines up with the first argument, the third inlet to the second
> argument, etc.

I agree. Many objects obey the rule that the k'th inlet matches argument
$k for several arguments in a row, usually all of them.

>  I think this is pretty clean and flexible, and I think
> it would be nice to have some kind of standard for this.

And the best way to make sure people are following a standard is to make 
it so easy to follow that it's harder to not follow it than to follow it. 
Of course I don't mean adding hurdles to doing it otherwise, but rather 
make a shortcut for those who follow the standard. Short of this, people 
who make abstractions/externals can get a friendly reminder, from someone 
who cares, that it would be better if they followed the standard.

> Obviously, it doesn't work for all objects, but I think it would be good to
> standardize on objects it does work for.

PureUnity's goal (when I work on it) is to design a taxonomy that 
separates objects that obey certain properties, from those that don't, 
because that's a way to reuse tests, but also because certainly it doesn't 
hurt documentation either, and it's even better if it can influence how 
abstractions are made.

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