[PD] how to use [tcpserver] in a non-OSC context?

[Martin Peach]

Roman Haefeli wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 18:45 -0400, Martin Peach wrote: 
>> Roman Haefeli wrote:
>>> hi all
>>>
>>> i would like to rewrite the netpd-server patch using [tcpserver], but i
>>> cannot figure out how to convert 'list of number' messages into ascii
>>> messages. the OSC classes also from mrpeach seem to do the conversion
>>> internally. what i would need would something similar without the OSC
>>> functionality. is there something around?
>>>
>> Well if you had a functional [str] you could do that.
> 
> it seems, that the conversion from string to any and vice versa is part
> of the OSC classes written by you. i don't see why the class, that
> _only_ does this conversion, needs a patched pd, when at the same time
> the OSC classes don't. 
> would it be possible to have both: an efficient [str] for pd-extended
> and [str]
> 

Yes, maybe a [serialize] and [unserialize] would be a good idea.
[unserialize] would take a list of integer floats, interpret them as 
ascii,  and convert it to a single symbol, and [serialize] would take a 
symbol and convert it to a list of integer floats on [0..255]. 
Converting floats and lists raises problems though (should a float be 
converted to its ascii or binary representation? How to tell if a list 
of floats is meant to be decoded as symbols or floats?).

I think [moocow/any2string] and [moocow/string2any] already do this, but 
I can't tell right now because they don't seem to be in my Pd 
0.40.3-extended-20080719, or I'm not looking in the right place.

Martin