[PD] counter + list of objects

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
marius schebella hat gesagt: // marius schebella wrote:

> I have a wish which I think is related to this discussion: more higher 
> level pd patches and better communication of existing patches. (ok, 
> that's 2 wishes.)

My take on wish one is exemplified in [list]-abs (and to some extent
in RTClib): I designed the [list]-abs to provide a higher level
interface to work with lists, that is implemented without any external
so it runs on *any* distribution of Pd. 

Once the interface was done, it was possible to develop alternate
implementations of the abstractions using externals. Example:
[list-drip] is a purepd abstraction, but personally I use a version,
which has [drip] hidden inside and is a bit faster. Another example:
[list-len] is available as a version for older Pds without [list
length] as well, the current version however started to use [list
length] as soon as that found its way into Pd. The side effect is,
that I don't need to hunt down every patch that uses [list-len]
and change it for each Pd version. And when Miller decides to include
some [list nth] method, I'm ready to use that by just changing the
[list-idx] abstraction in one place. 

Another example is in RTClib, which uses a variant or [urn]. As there
are two incompatible [urn]s I wrote a third one, [urne], as a purepd
abstraction. Still one could use one of the [urn]s of maxlib or zexy
inside urne.pd instead.  But I don't force on anybody which [urn] to
use. I don't like forcing people and I don't like being forced.

Morale of story: In my belief, abstraction collections that (as
default) only rely on core objects make life much easier for just
about everyone, beginners and advanced users.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                                     _ ______footils.org__