[PD] implementing tooltips WAS: Pd-extended 0.43 updates: lots of new editing features

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jul 16, 2011, at 5:59 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

>
>
> --- On Sat, 7/16/11, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:
>
>> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
>> Subject: Re: [PD] implementing tooltips WAS: Pd-extended 0.43  
>> updates: lots of new editing features
>> To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at at.or.at>
>> Cc: "pd-list" <pd-list at iem.at>, "Martin Peach" <martin.peach at sympatico.ca 
>> >
>> Date: Saturday, July 16, 2011, 6:11 PM
>> On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Hans-Christoph
>> Steiner wrote:
>>
>>> This leads to the question: should tooltip messages be
>> per-instance or per-class?  It could easily just be a
>> field with a standard name in each object's struct, then it
>> would be a simple per-class implementation.  Having an
>> 'assist' method means that the external writer can decide
>> whether the string is per-class or per-instance.
>>
>> Yes... whichever is appropriate. But the default
>> assist-method should be designed so that in most cases,
>> externals don't need to have a custom assist-method.
>>
>>>> I don't see a need to extend any structs, Pd just
>> needs to call an object's assist method whenever the mouse
>> is hovering over one of its inlet/outlets,
>>
>> A default assist-method needs to be storing data somewhere,
>> and it cannot automatically pickup inlet names from anywhere
>> in an external's source code. It has to be stored in some
>> data-structures... For example, in both t_class and t_inlet
>> (for nonproxy inlets).
>
> Is it possible in c to parse a help file for "OUTLET_0 float  
> symbol"?  That's what I'm currently doing (which is trivial on the  
> tcl side).
>
> Actually the way I do it, you parse on the fly only when the mouse  
> hovers over the xlet (which you could toggle with a menu button).

Parsing text in C is definitely possible, just not fun.  Its much  
easier in Tcl.

>>> This is an important point that Jonathan brings up: if
>> we add an 'assist' method, that could mess up anything that
>> ever sent a message that started with 'assist'.
>>
>> Then just do it like it is for savefn and propertiesfn. You
>> see, it doesn't have to be something that goes through
>> class_addmethod. The 'assist' symbol issue is not an
>> argument against defining an assist-method because it could
>> be a field named assistfn directly in t_class.
>
> What do I have to do to register a new "assistfn"?  I don't really  
> understand that part of the source code.


That would require adding the assistfn to the t_class structure.

.hc

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Computer science is no more related to the computer than astronomy is  
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