[PD] sending image from of / libpd

[Peter Brinkmann]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Peter Brinkmann <
peter.brinkmann at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Dan Wilcox <danomatika at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Aug 31, 2011, at 8:45 AM, Peter Brinkmann wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 6:25 AM, Dan Wilcox <danomatika at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I think it's much simpler to just add a call to get/set the message
>>> limit, say:
>>>
>>> int libpd_max_message_length();
>>> void libpd_set_max_message_length(int length);
>>>
>>> This doesn't break any current code.
>>>
>>> Having to set a custom limit each time is far more tedious then just
>>> setting it at startup.
>>>
>>
>> Actually, breakage of current code is a feature as far as I am concerned
>> because it makes people aware of the change, and it should be harmless
>> because it's easy to fix.  The language bindings for Java and Objective-C
>> actually became simpler when I updated them for the new version.
>>
>> I don't think the new signature of libpd_start_message is tedious,
>> really.  Essentially, I see two use cases: Either you know an a-priori limit
>> on your message length, in which case there's the tiny extra effort of
>> passing in the limit every time you start a message, or you don't have an
>> a-priori limit, in which case you need to check the length before assembling
>> a message anyway.
>>
>> Another aspect is API design.  One feature of a good API is that it's
>> difficult to use incorrectly.  With a separate call for setting the message
>> limit, people will forget that the limit is a consideration.  With the
>> current solution, people will briefly contemplate the length of each message
>> they start, which is a good thing.
>>
>>
>> ... but you can simply return an error or print a message complaining when
>> the message is too long. My whole point is that most people won't bother
>> changing the limit and those that do will just pick a larger size with
>> plenty of space anyway. It's too much work to bother setting it EACH and
>> EVERY time. It's far LESS elegant, and dare I say intuitive. It seems like
>> an unnecessary step. [eople that have problems will only run into this once,
>> increase the max size, and then be fine. Why force them to compute a size
>> manually each time when they could just be happily adding objects ... ?
>>
>
> Actually, I don't mean to make people compute the size every time  The
> length parameter in libpd_start_message merely makes sure that you'll have
> enough space for that many elements; the number of elements in the actual
> message may be smaller.  If you know that your messages will never exceed a
> certain length, then you can simply use that maximum length every time.  In
> that situation, I would just wrap the call to libpd_start_message in a macro
> or a convenience function to get exactly the effect that you want.
>

By the way, there's also a third way between specifying the max size every
time and creating a convenience function.  The start message function will
only allocate new memory if the requested size is larger than what was
requested before.  You can also say libpd_start_message(MAX_SIZE) right
after you initialize libpd, and then start all messages with
libpd_start_message(0), where 0 means that it'll just use whatever was
allocated before.  This is convenient, but it doesn't quite look right to
me, so I'd probably still go with convenience functions.
     Peter
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