[PD-dev] pd-extended loadlib request

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> 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.

no language with a native support for fixed aliases comes to my mind 
(apart from max/msp) - but i am sure there are people with more insight 
into different languages than me.

this doesn't mean that much though, as there are a lot of languages that 
allow to define custom aliases (which would be a nice feature in Pd too, 
btw), either by using C-style macros or mechanisms as frank's example.

> 
> Pd's aliases are just typing shortcuts.

and there is exactly nothing bad in that.

> 
>> 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.  

the latter is true.
otoh, i never use [trigger anything anything anything anything] and 
often use aliases.
compared to other patches posted on this list, i find my patches clean 
and readable. this of course doesn't say that much, as i have written 
them, but then my patches are not totally isolated either.

i still find [trigger anything bang] less readable than [t a b].

so if we were to remove aliases, i would clearly vote to remove the long 
names...


mfg.asdr
IOhannes