[PD-dev] Re: is namecanvas obsolete or not?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, Miller Puckette wrote:
> > Right, I'm rofgetting, the "pd $0-x" ends up naming the canvas
[...]
> Most of the other Lisps and Lisp-inspired languages switched to having
> true local-variables during the 1970's. The only 1990's languages that
> were designed with an old-skool 1960's Lisp symbol-table are either:
>   1. Student homework in Compiler Theory courses
>      (but only IF the prof doesn't forbid students from doing it)
>   2. That visual language called PureData.
> Understood?

I wish not to say "other languages are doing things in this way, so why
doesn't Pd just conform and submit to the inevitability of history?" ;-)  
but more like "other languages have already dealt with the issues that are
nowadays cropping up in Pd, so why don't we consider how they have solved
them when it happened to them?"

It's all a matter of identifying good solutions from other systems instead
of reinventing the wheel in some other way. It's reuse at the
design-level.

IMHO, this would be a good moment to consider such a solution for such a
problem, and figure out a way to evolve Pd out of the problem while
keeping some form of backward-compatibility with the current ($0)
solution.

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