[PD-dev] $0 in messages, was: multiple $arg-expansion

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> What is a major hinderance is the list vs. undefined set quandary.  

One major hinderance is your insistence on calling them undefined sets. 
The fact is that they're neither undefined nor sets. In PureData those 
things are called messages. Messages have selectors. Selectors are used to 
select methods.

Suppose that the Pd of your dreams comes to existence, and that may mean
without any so-called "undefined sets". Every message would be a "list". 
Then how would you send a message like "set $1" or "color $1 $2" to an
object? somehow the list method (which is then the only method in each
class) would have to deal with all messages. Then a neat idea to break
down the code in more manageable bits would be to select one of several C
functions depending on the first element of the received list. This first
argument could be called a "selector". But now, what about a 
list-processing object that really needs to be able to receive a list in 
the same inlet as you would use to do "set" and "color" and such? To 
disambiguate this, let's prefix the lists intended for list-processing 
with a special selector that we might call "list".

Thus messages would be called lists and former lists would be called 
something else like "really lists" but there might be better names.
And then again there would be things that are lists but not "really lists" 
and there appear again the "undefined sets" that aren't undefined nor 
sets.

Or have I missed any important detail?

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada