[PD-dev] BUG: namespace prefixes broken in 0.40

[Chris McCormick]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 10:39:50PM -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> >On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> >I advocate use of consistent syntax all over pd. Consistency is  
> >more important than minimality. If pd's syntax is too minimal, it  
> >encourages small syntax hacks that aren't portable to the rest of  
> >the pd system, such as -y amp(0:100)(0:100).
> 
> That is strange, I hadn't seen that before.  I also have not seen  
> gridflow before.  I should say, then I am talking about things in  
> common usage.  There is definitely a lot of stuff shoe-horned into  
> some of those draw and plot boxes.  I wonder how to make that stuff  
> work without the new syntax?

I would say that datastructures should be considered amongst things that
are "in common usage". It's simply not possible to use datastructures
for visualising audio data without the scaling syntax, and I think
there's a good reason that Miller made the syntax look like that -
it's not possible to do it without some kind of custom syntax like
that. Datastructures are part of the Pd core.

Incidentally, I also think this highlights the need for a poll of the
Pd list at some point so we can get some idea of what users are using
what externals, abstraction sets, libraries, etc. I would love to see
the numbers, and it would probably be useful for Miller to see what is
popular about Pd in a quantifiable scientific way.

> I don't quite get the scaling stuff, so I guess its hard to see why  
> it needs to be done that way.  Perhaps there could be a scaling  
> standard variable like float x, float y, and float w.  It could be an  
> array of 4 values, or two values, a ratio and offset.

I think you should read up on DS some more and try using the scaling
yourself.

> Another difference between [declare] and data structures/gridflow is  
> that obstensibly, [declare] will be used everywhere, while DS/GF  
> would be a special topic.  For special areas, special syntax is  
> perhaps more excusable than something used everywhere.

In my opinion datastructures should stay core to Pd as more and more
people create GOP datastructure abstractions for others to use. It's
possible to make amazing custom GUIs that will work with vanilla Pd
without requiring users to compile/install complicated externals.

Best,

Chris, your friendly neighbourhood DS advocate. ;)

-------------------
chris at mccormick.cx
http://mccormick.cx