[PD-dev] Re: flext installation - 2

[Thomas Grill]

Hi Marc,
i cc the posts to the pd-devel list... you should better ask your questions
there so that others can contribute and listen.

> Yes, this works. (The 15 warning are just MS noise, I assume.) But I do
> not understand what gensym actually does. The J.M. Zmoelnig document
> (http://iem.kug.ac.at/pd/externals-HOWTO/HOWTO-externals-en.html) does
> not say much about this particular issue. Maybe you know?

gensym registeres a symbol (given by a string) in the PD messages table or
fetches it from it if it's already stored.
A few often used important symbols also have static equivalents as you have
seen:
s_float for gensym("float"), s_signal for gensym("signal") etc.

>
> Would you recommend flext even for those people who make externals for
> PD only (and not for MAX). What advantages would one have?

I use it for any external but i'm biased of course.
Advantages:
- more compact
- use C++ features (like inheritance)
- a lot of convencience functions
- threading
Disadvantages:
- small processing and memory overhead
- size of externals (this will improve shortly)

There are more points to consider, please read on in
http://www.parasitaere-kapazitaeten.net/~thomas/ext/flext/flext-intro.pdf
http://www.parasitaere-kapazitaeten.net/~thomas/ext/flext/flext-LAD2.pdf


> I am attempting to get the first example of the flext tutorial (simple
> 1) to compile properly on win2k VC++ 6.0.
>
> I am receiving this error:
>
> LNK1104: cannot open file "flext_d-pdwin.lib"
>

Did you build the flext library beforehand? If yes, it should reside in the
flext/pd-msvc folder somewhere.
You'll use have to adjust the path somewhere in the project settings of the
tutorial examples, so that the library can be found.

- If you're using build-pd-msvc.bat, you should edit config-pd-msvc.txt
accordingly
- If you are using the VC++ project, you'll have to adjust the include and
library paths.


best greetings,
Thomas