[PD] dynamic-named arrays

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Thomas Grill hat gesagt: // Thomas Grill wrote:

> you are right, but i'm not talking about changing the current behavior (and
> breaking things), but rather extending it.
> There could for example be $$0-$$9 parameters which relate to the subpatch
> parameters, not to the ones of an abstraction.

Yes, this wouldn't break anything. 

> Pix is also right, stating that one could also make an abstraction every
> time such a behavior is needed, but i'd rather have it easier to handle.
> Additionally, in PD i also often miss the distinction between $0-$9 and
> #0-#9 that Max has, the first being message parameters and the latter ones
> being abstraction arguments... 

The disctinction between message arguments and abstraction arguments
as well as the distinction between subpatches and abstractions are two
of the most confusing things to understand for Pd beginners. I think,
the first problem could be alleviated by introducing #1 arguments for
messages and still supporting, but maybe deprecating the $1 form here. 
Although that is still another way then in Max.

The subpatch/abstraction difficulty is more a "linguistic" problem. As
abstractions could also be described as "subpatches", because they are
subordinate patches inside another patch, it is easy to confuse them
with the real subpatches according to Pd vocabulary. 

At least I had a hard and long time figuring all this out initially.
The html documentation is correct here (mathematically and logically)
but it should be a lot clearer and deeper in this topic. For example,
abstractions are explained as a subchapter in the chapter called
"subpatches", indicating abstractions *are* subpatches, which they
aren't. They share some behaviour (hidden, GOP, open on click,...) but
other things they don't share (argument passing, localized variables,
data structure handling,...)

Maybe a table describing differences and shared behaviour is needed.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__