[PD-dev] pd-extended loadlib request

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jan 23, 2008, at 4:50 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>
>> I think they were only added to Max/Pd as typing shortcuts, which is
>> very weak argument in favor of them.  I am not saying we should
>> remove them, but I think they should be avoided as a matter of
>> convention.
>>
>> What other programming language has aliases?
>
> It's not that uncommon if you think of operator overloading in C++ and
> many other languages, or things like "from math import radians as rad"
> in Python.

Operator overloading is a very different thing.  It is allowing a  
given function name to accept different combos of arguments for the  
expressed purpose of implementing a given logical idea across a wide  
range of data types.  For example, allowing "+" to work with floats,  
ints, longs, strings, etc.

Pd's aliases are just typing shortcuts.

> Shortcuts can be a very strong argument, and especially in
> a graphical language, [t a a a a a a] often is better than
> [trigger anything anything anything anything anything anything]

I find that it is rarely better to use [t a a a a] and I rarely use  
any aliases.  As you have written, good clean patches don't have  
cables crossing over, for example. I find that [trigger anything  
anything anything] encourages people to lay out their patches cleanly.

.hc

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----

There is no way to peace, peace is the way.       -A.J. Muste