[PD-dev] Proposals for object categories

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2009, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> i used [pix_sig2pix~] as an example about how categories often fail. it 
> was the first object that came to my mind that clearly belongs into 
> several categories at the same time. there are other objects (within 
> zexy, vanilla, list-abs, creb, you-name-it) that are not simply "glue" 
> or "math", but both and more. and this is not necessarily a design 
> problem of these objects (though sometimes it might well be).

I agree: see also:

   http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2007-07/051652.html
   http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2007-07/051659.html
   http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2007-07/051768.html
   ... and more mails in that thread.

> fortunately loads of object do belong to a simple category, so don't let 
> Gödel stop us from trying to define such categories.

What's Gödel have to do with it at all?

(I don't necessarily agree with the rest of your mail.)

> otoh, the object interface for doing complex-math in signal-domain might 
> look significantly different than the one in message-domain, or 
> image-domain, or matrix-domain. so, not all objects doing complex-maths 
> (in various domains) should go into the same category "complex-math"

as much as possible, interfaces that are not the same about things that 
are, should be transformable by a function that takes an interfaces and 
turns it into another interface. This is so that people can guess how a 
class works, from the knowledge of how a similar class works. It can save 
on the amount of help files too. Ideally, we'd save on the number of 
classes, though.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec