[PD-dev] Hello

[Riccardo Trocca]

Hello, I'm almost a newbye to Pure-Data even if I had some experience 
with MAX/MSP. I've got experience in building systems for real-time 
processing of video (live or movies) in order to generate data for 
music/sound synthesis. I'm looking at writing PD externals to do that. 
I'd like to know if it is possible (and how) to add a new datatype to 
PD, ore, some advice on how to implement my ideas.
Reading the documentation I've seen that there are very few datatypes: 
number, symbol, pointer and audio buffers. Given that I'm just beginning 
to tackle the problem may be I'm asking some FAQ, anyway...
I can't understand what is the pointer datatype.
A symbol seems to be "just" a string. Can I add a value a pointer to a 
data structure?
It is possible to build something as audio buffers (image data type, or 
multidimensional array)? Does that require modifications to PD?
The system I'm working on, allows to create a chain of processing on 
images, then when the system begins to run there is an init phase where 
each element of the processing chain is told what kind of images it will 
receive, it initializes itself and its internal buffers, and then starts 
working everytime it receives data. I think that it is more or less what 
happens with the audio chain in PD.
Framestein has a different approach given what I've seen.
Something similar seems to be GridFlow, but I'm having a hard time 
trying to understand its inner workings.
Well if somebody can give me some pointer to start think about... thanks
        Riccardo Trocca