[PD-dev] Refactoring Pure Data
Mathieu Bouchard
matju at artengine.ca
Wed Sep 13 01:01:26 CEST 2006
On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Miller Puckette wrote:
> My top priority for Pd is to finish getting the 'language' defined. I
> don't see this as an open-ended pursuit
If Pd isn't open-ended then it will have to be superceded...
> another year or so of fooling with 'data structures' seems to be the
> main remaining thing.
... and I mean especially because you don't realize what's left to be
changed in the language.
> I don't see much point in rewriting existing code
You should distinguish between several "degrees" of rewriting, or in other
words, not conflate refactoring and plain rewriting. Not doing so
constitutes a strawman argument.
> I want to do some heavy run-time profiling to find out what really needs
> improvement.
I don't see why improving the speed of pd should be your main concern,
especially considering your disgust for SIMD.
> I think Vincent is right on about the need for better error handling.
I've improved some of this: I changed error() and fprintf() and post() to
pd_error() where it can be done, so that they can be found with the "Find
Last Error" feature. Also I removed class names from error messages
because those are redundant if you "Find Last Error", and misleading if
they were telling the wrong classname like some of yours.
My future plans include getting error messages translated in Deutsch,
Bokmål, Français, etc.; and making them hyperlinked, as a faster Find Last
Error that doesn't just find the last one; and also choosing one of the
possible error handling schemes.
> This is also, partly, a design issue, since patches themselves sometimes
> need a mechanism for detecting errors.
I've described several possibilities for such mechanisms in various mails
to pd-list and pd-dev in the last years. Got no answers. I need it in
order to be able to implement a significant portion of PureUnity. Before
then I'll most likely reread what Winston&Horn's LISP book has to say
about error handling.
> the data traversal objects need to get finalized first.
A lot of error statements are in the data traversal classes' code or in
other code that they commonly use. This could be a nice testbed for better
error handling.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada
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