[PD-dev] info classes

[Jonathan Wilkes]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>; "pd-dev at iem.at" <pd-dev at iem.at>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Friday, March 1, 2013 1:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [PD-dev] info classes
> 
> Just made a change so that the "args" method grabs from
> the parent instead of the root canvas.

After some more testing I think this change is wrong. If [my_abstraction]'s
args are "foo bar" and I'm inside subpatch [pd blah], the tk window for [pd blah]
shows the args as "(foo bar)" and not "(blah)".  But this is just an effect
of the larger point, which is that the _abstraction_ arguments are the ones
that replace dollarsign variables regardless of which subpatch you happen to
be in.  So the "args" method to [canvasinfo] should return the atoms that will
replace $1, $2, $3, etc. in the context of the current canvas.  Even for nested
subpatches, that means the arguments for the root canvas (i.e., containing
abstraction, or if there's no abstraction then the toplevel patch), so those are
the ones that will be returned.  That makes the canvasinfo "args" method
consistent with the rest of the Pd interface.

The only question is how to accommodate a user who wants to grab the args
of a [pd].  For this I'd like to simply add a method that returns the entire object
box contents for the current canvas.  So [pd blah] would return "pd blah",
[foo-abstraction 1 2 3] would return "foo-abstraction 1 2 3", and so on.  (I suppose
a toplevel patch would just return a bang since there's no box, and I already
have a "filename" method.)

But what should I call the method?  objstring? boxmatter? boxtext? boxguts?

-Jonathan