[PD] how should namespaces work WAS: Pd-0.40.3-extended-rc2 released

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jul 22, 2008, at 12:43 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Chris McCormick hat gesagt: // Chris McCormick wrote:
>
>> In Python you can also say:
>>
>>>>> from math import sin
>>>>> sin(0.5)
>> 0.47942553860420301
>>
>> or even
>>
>>>>> from math import *
>>
>> so for your examples you'd say:
>>
>> from communication.human.writtenlanguage.english.word import *
>> and
>> leave
>>
>> The reason for this is that if you import absolutely everything into
>> your global namespace by default, you pollute it and cause  
>> conflicts and
>> name clashes. > This has been discussed several times on the list  
>> and is a
>> terrible idea. This has also been solved 100% by languages like  
>> Python
>> already, as illustrated by Frank above.
>
> I think, another issue is what Pd should be like: more like Python
> with it's huge set of builtin, importable libraries or more like Lua
> with a very small core of just the necessary tools to get things
> running. As my example showed, in Python *everything* has to be
> imported except the builtin operators. In Lua you can directly call
> "math.sin(x)" without importing. But in Lua, you cannot import
> "xml.sax.xmlreader.IncrementalParser" as in Python, because Lua
> doesn't ship with such things.
>
> Pd-extended obviously has the Python model in mind, while I would
> prefer a more minimalistic, Lua-like Pd, as the latter is much easier
> to maintain, especially with a chaotic artsy community like ours.
>
> Then there are other problems: I don't think, there's an "import" or
> "require" for Pd, that works. AFAICT there's not even an agreement on
> how it *should* work (see the "declare -path" discussion). Before such
> an agreement is reached, code is fruitless. Even dangerous, as it
> adds more variables to consider when making decisions.

I think python may be a bit too strict  I think [math/sin] should  
always work without having to import (so I guess that's like Lua).   
To me a key difference between the Python and Lua approaches are a  
matter of scale.  Python aims to be a platform for programs of any  
size.  Lua aims for small scale programming and even just configuration.

As for included libraries, what is most important to me is to reduce  
the time spent reinventing the wheel, and then also installing and  
managing libraries.  When many libraries are included, then you spend  
much less time reinventing the wheel and managing libraries.  But it  
means more work for the developers.  If we can figure out how to  
better distribute the work, then Pd-extended will work better.

.hc


>
> Ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                                     _  
> ______footils.org__
>
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