[PD-dev] presets, a proposal

[Krzysztof Czaja]

hi Guenter,

the main advantage of the proposal is simplicity.  Another
advantage is, that it is equivalent to the preset api in max, yet
simpler, and different enough to avoid copyright claims.  Besides,
it works out-of-the-box (I have already done a preset's prototype,
in order to test it).

The main point is that both validation, and object selection, is
done in a client code.  So, it is up to a client code to use
symbolic ids, once these are available.

For my part, I do not feel they are needed so badly.  What most
users expect, is to be able to drop a [preset] object on a patch,
and click on it.  For more demanding users, there are various ways
of including or excluding objects.  The [preset] in max includes
all guis in a patch by default (except [table]), and uses
connections drawn from its outlets for specifying exceptions.
This is a flat scheme, though -- subpatches and abstractions need
their own [preset]s (synchronization is pretty easy).

Checking symbolic ids should be just another way, used by another
client.  Yet another could be based on the 'flags' argument and
return value of the statefn call, as designed in the proposal
``for future use''.

Also with validation, just checking object's serial number against
its class name should do for recalling from memory.  An additional
xy check, and a simple warning if failed, seems ok for loading
from a file.  There is no danger of corrupting things, because an
object is guaranteed to handle restoring request -- the requst
being a simple pd_forwardmess() call, which passes atoms stored by
the object's class' statefn function.  If this happens to be
another object of the same class, then a user would probably
figure out that the edits have been made, without much confusion
(ask maxers).

Without knowing Miller's opinion, we are probably wasting our
time, though...

Krzysztof

guenter geiger wrote:
...
> It is a good thing to have an official API for saving state. In the case
> of state the API doesn't really help 

why is it so, btw?