What is the "ft1" message used for?

Johannes M Zmoelnig zmoelnig at iem.kug.ac.at
Fri Nov 3 11:37:17 CET 2000



On Tue, 1 Aug 2000, Larry Troxler wrote:

> A method for this is defined in most (all?) of the DSP objects, but I
> can't find anything in the core PD code that sends this message.
> 
> What is it's purpose, and what sends it to the objects?
>
the "ft1-message" is no message in common sense.
"ft1" is simply the identifier of the second inlet (this is defined
somehow in the code :: add_inlet(..., "ft1"), and add_method(..., "ft1"))
So everytime, a float is sent to the second inlet (the "ft1"inlet) it's
just the same as if you would send a "ft1 <float>" into the first inlet:
of course no one will do this, since we WANT to use the second inlet.

you could chose any name instead of "ft1", pe "knuddelmuddel", but of
course "ft1" reads like "float1" (in contrast to "float" which would be
the identifier for (???))

as far as i've seen this is the only clean solution to perform a
function callre
when anything (! note !: "anything" stand for anything but an "anything":
floats, symbols, lists, pointers, bangs; a real "anything" is like a list,
but real lists have the identifier "list" as first atom or a float as
first atom, whereas an "anything" will have some other symbol) is sent to
the second/third/... inlet. if you don't need a function call when using a
minor inlet (you see: pds programming paradigma says that all minor
(right) inlets should create no outputs: most of the times (?) no output
will also mean that you don't have to do calculations when using a minor
inlet. so minor inlets a used for setting the environment only) you can
write directly into memory (there are some examples in the code).
if you need a function call you'll have to need an identifier. chose your
identifiers wisely: for example "list" would be a bad one, since everytime
a list is send to the left inlet, this would be as if you would have
talked to the left inlet.
if you define an identifier "set" for the second inlet, "<setting>" to the
second inlet would do exactly the same as "set <setting>" to the first
inlet.

think, that's it

mfg.sad.r
iohannes
 
> Larry
> 
> 






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