[PD-dev] [once] default closed...

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> So the other kind of consistency in question here is consistency of  
> usage.  All similar functions should have the same arguments, for  
> example.  Which type of consistency trumps the other?  That's the  
> question at hand.
> 
> I personally feel that its not more linguistically consistent to have  
> [once] default open when it has no argument.  But this is  
> inconsistent in usage with similar objects ([spigot]...).

I would speculate, that users would expect [once] to be open as
default.  While I generally don't use [once] in its own right, several
of my patches have [pd once] subpatches, and these all default to
open. There also is a very similar abstraction in the RTC-lib called
"first-bang", which is like a [once] that is open as default but
additionally passes bangs coming in after the first one to a second
outlet. Nowhere in RTC-lib [first-bang] is used with a loadbang to
its second, "reset"-inlet.

I guess, basically we disagree about what should be valued higher:
consistency or usefulness. I consider a default-closed [once] rather
useless. Not completely useless, but "not used 99% of the time" and
the 1% can be dealt with through a loadbang, which is contrary to a
default-close or default-open [spigot]: Here both versions are used
about equally often.

This actually is similar to the inconsistency of [timer]: Most of the
time, [timer] follows a [trigger bang bang] object (or rather a [t b
b] object which even has the same visual length as [timer]) and the
connections are made in a non-crossed fashion. That's the (only?)
reason, [timer] has its active inlet on the right. In this case,
Miller also chose usefulness over consistency, and I'm glad he did.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__