[PD] [pd META] metadata format WAS: pd 0.43 branch with the new GUI code

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Aug 27, 2009, at 3:47 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> How about Outlet0, etc?  Its really just a unique ID, so once  
>> parsed the
>> tag could be displayed as whatever.
>
> Actually I think, "Outlet 0" is easier to parse with Pd: [route  
> Outlet]-[route
> 0 1 2 3]. Having a separator like the ":" makes reading easier. I  
> guess, for
> Pd parsing padding that with spaces would help and not hinder  
> readability that
> much.


[route outlet0 outlet1 outlet2 outlet3]


> So outlet comments could look like:
>
> Outlet 0 : left stereo signal
> Outlet 1 : right stereo signal
>
> I will for now continue to not use a space, and when I'm done, run a  
> regex over
> them.

Rarely do people have a standalone colon in writing, so this will  
create a common syntax error.


>> Many tag interfaces use space-separated tags, its a common idiom.  It
>> makes sense with Pd too.
>
> I *really* want multiple-word tags. :) So a separator is needed, but  
> one
> without Pd-meaning could be used, like "-".

A "-" dash/minus/hyphen separator would be a much better option than a  
colon ":" since in normal (English at least) usage, a "-" is separated  
on both sides with a space.

Can you give some examples of why [pd META] needs multiple-word tags?   
I mean its nice sometimes, but there are very well established tag  
interfaces that use space-separated tags.  Since this text is in Pd  
patches, it should follow Pd syntax rules, since Pd users already know  
them well, unless there is a strong reason to diverge.  With only a  
few exceptions, the function in an object box is the first word in a  
space-separated list.  In a message, the first word of a space- 
separated list is the selector.

What's more needed is a quoting mechanism.  Space-separated tags  
usually use "two words" quotes to join them.  But that's a bigger  
issue in Pd...

> Anyway, many values use commas already, because they are written in  
> natural
> language which has commas so the parser should be aware of them.

That is for sure something that will happen and will have to be  
handled.  I just ask that we avoid making commas and semi-colons a  
required part of the data format.

.hc




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