[GEM-dev] gem and init to 0

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Sat Mar 21 22:26:50 CET 2009


On Mar 9, 2009, at 11:58 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

>
> On Mar 9, 2009, at 9:45 AM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
>
>> Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>> So it seems that gem objects are initing everything to zero,  
>>> things like colorRGB and translateXYZ don't work if you specify  
>>> less than three values.  It seems to me that those missing values  
>>> should be set to zero, since that is how Pd generally works,
>>
>>
>> hmm, i would prefer if elements that are used wrongly would not  
>> create at all.
>>
>> e.g. if you make an object [translateXYZ 0 1] you will get an error  
>> message on the console "[translateXYZ]: needs 0 or 3 arguments".
>> users should read the console and properly create the objects.
>> i understand that nobody will have a look at the console everytime  
>> an object has been created.
>> so they should be guided by some feedback: the best feedback i can  
>> imagine right now would be to fail to create the object.
>>
>> the alternative would be to provide wrong default arguments. i cal  
>> lthem "wrong" because they will most likely be wrong in most cases.  
>> therefore i prefer to not impose them on the users.
>
> Why is that wrong?  I seems perfectly natural to me in Pd land, and  
> I bring this up because students did exactly this.  Values  
> initialize to zero when not specified.  There are definitely  
> precedents to this in Pd-vanilla, why should Gem be different than Pd?
>
> The other side of this question is: where is the harm in doing  
> this?  Would this cause any problems to make Gem be more like Pd?
>
> <init_to_0_precedents.pd>

I never heard back on this one.  I think it is important for Gem to be  
as much like Pd-vanilla objects as possible.  It may not be what  
everyone wants to do, but I don't think it would cause harm or get in  
the way of anything so I think its worth adding.  I'm willing to do  
the work.

.hc


>
>
>
> .hc
>
>> mfg,asdr
>> IOhannes
>>
>> [pack 0 ]
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There is no way to peace, peace is the way.       -A.J. Muste
>
>





----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"[T]he greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own  
government." - Martin Luther King, Jr.







More information about the GEM-dev mailing list