[PD-dev] PD patches in XML

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Krzysztof Czaja wrote:

> I find it hard to give up the basic Pd principle that everything may
> be controlled with messages.  I wonder, if there is any real technical
> reason for abandoning message-based handling of object state
> (including visual properties, IDs, whatever), apart from the
> shortcomings of the current Pd type system -- mainly, the lack of a
> string type?

Exactly. This is what I should have said when I asked the question "Why?".

Here's an idea:

 * the Pd format is two fingers away from being a subset of the Tcl
   syntax: they are compatible in their handling of spaces and
   semicolons. The dollar signs are also somewhat similar.

 * The "two fingers away" is that the handful of special characters of
   Tcl are mostly not special in Pd, or else are saved/reloaded in broken
   ways (e.g. backslashes).

 * The special characters of Tcl could bring a lot more features to Pd,
   such as:
     {} for nested lists
     $ with more options
     \ escaping, saving non-ascii chars
     "" string
     [] (not sure how this would map to Pd)

 * Using concepts from Tcl is a kind of reuse from a language that Pd
   already has some syntaxical affinity with. (Whether Tcl inspired Pd or
   SH inspired Pd or whatever else is besides the point; the point is that
   right now Pd looks somewhat like Tcl.)

 * Most of those features would become useable all over Pd, including
   [netsend]/[netreceive] and all patchers. This is the killer feature
   of this proposal. AFAIK, the XML side of things doesn't do anything
   about it.

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