[PD-dev] PD patches in XML

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Georg Holzmann wrote:

> The advantages of XML would be (as anyone of you knows):
> - PD patches could be merged into the CVS
[...]
>      <outlet ID="msg0"> 0 </outlet>   <!-- is this good? -->
[...]
> short explanation: every object or message gets an ID and with that ID
> it's possible to connect all the objects - but it's only a first trial.

Ok, you're exactly not solving the problem of merging in CVS. That
problem is that object ID's change too often, because if an object is
deleted, its ID is not skipped, and a bunch of objects are renumbered just
so that the ID is not skipped, because there is no way in the format to
skip one. I think this has to be solved in the pd internals first, in the
runtime storage of a patch, because it's where the renumbering (or the
ignoring of numbering) normally happens. Then that change can be
propagated to the writing in either .xml or a slightly extended version of
.pd; and there could be a save-option that would renumber objects so that
the .pd file is compatible with older pd's. The new .pd format would have
a directive like this:

#S 42;

where 42 means to increment the object counter by 42 without creating new
objects, so that the "#X connect" lines stay the same as much as possible.

> would be possible for blind people to write PD-patches - and at least in
> Graz I know a blind man who wants to try PD ...)

Let me guess: his name is Mario ? A month after the convention I recalled
that I had met online a guy called Mario from Graz several years earlier,
but I didn't know PureData back then.

_____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard -=- Montréal QC Canada -=- http://artengine.ca/matju