[PD] Array Enhancements
Mathieu Bouchard
matju at artengine.ca
Sat Sep 19 20:26:05 CEST 2009
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> You can get all of the above (except onMouseUp behavior) using
> data structures. Really, there should just be a way to "deputize" a
> ds array as a Pd array usable by [tabread] and the like.
> So if you have a subpatch with
> [struct blah float x array some_array]
> you could put the following in the same subpatch:
> [deputize some_array]
> And now [tabwrite~ some_array]
> will work.
I don't get the point of it. there is already a hidden struct called
'float' defined by pd in a hidden patch (which doesn't appear in the
window list) upon startup. Afaik this is a sign that [table] is making
something that can be used as a DS array. Having it vice-versa shouldn't
need something like [deputize]. However, such a new object class would be
nice for introducing a "stride factor", e.g. if you have a struct of
several elements such as "float x float y float z" and you want
[tabwrite~] to use only z and not x nor y; this is unless it would be
better to make it an option in every array-using class, or to make it an
object-class that does something else: e.g. [virtualarray foo bar y] would
make a fake "bar" array that is actually a subpart of foo such that
modifying bar also modifies that subpart of foo (not a copy of it). This
is like the VIEW feature of the SQL language.
> But I don't know the inner workings of Pd either, so I'm not sure how
> feasible this is.
Your suggestion prompted me to have an idea which in turn sounds like the
kind of API change that could go hand-in-hand with a replacement to the
"64-bit fixes" of Pd 0.41, but I'd have to think about it more. It would
be a generic feature for setting the spacing between relevant elements in
an array, in bytes. But it may involve too many changes at once for me to
be comfortable with.
>> I know this is probably flawed for I know not the inner technical
>> workings of Pd, or for its purposes, there are other more suitable
>> methods for gui interaction, but is any of this possible? cheers
Well, if you think about the fact that Pd 0.41 fixes the 64-bit problems
by adding 100% waste (thus the resulting array wastes 50% of its space),
you can guess that it's because it wasn't easy making an efficient fix,
therefore it's probably hard to make the [deputize] I suggested; however,
it's probably easy to make the [deputize] you suggest (?), but I haven't
tried and I don't know what it would involve, i just know that as long as
your struct has only one element in it, all versions of Pd so far have
their internals fairly ready to accept such a feature.
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| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801
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