[PD] [inlet], [outlet].

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On 6 May 2003, jfm3 wrote:

> I agree. I think the inlet object should take several symbolic
> arguments. Your abstraction should then get that many inlets, and the
> little inlet object box should take on that many outlets. Data sent to
> the first inlet will both come out of the first outlet of the inlet
> object box, and be sent to the first name after "inlet", etc.. This
> would be much more orthogonal to the way the ui elements work. The
> position of an object should bear as little semantic load as possible.
> Of course, inlet objects with *no* arguments should continue to work
> as they do now. Otherwise pretty much every patch in existence would
> break.

This is an interesting alternative to the (jMax-style) way that I
proposed. Maybe I should have proposed the same thing as well, but I
sticked to the non-broken solution that is closest to the
PD-style. However your method sounds familiar because I am already using
it in a dataflow system of my own, where object #-1 is the "flip side" of
the patcher (its inlets are the patcher's outlets, and its outlets are the
patcher's inlets). Naturally, for a visual system, it may be better to
make that two separate objects like you propose.

(I'm still wondering which solution, the numbered [inlet]'s, or the single
[inlet] with multiple outlets, is better.)

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju