[PD] what is a list? (symbols vs. floats)

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> Right, to reiterate, I understand what is happening, but I am
> wondering why.  This set up makes handling mixed symbol/float messages
> in a general way more difficult and I don't see the benefit of this
> system.  I am a big fan of "as simple as possible, but no simpler".  
> I am wondering if this could be simpler.

I think this might be the result of evolution of dataflow systems from one
in which only single values would be transmitted, to one augmented with
the OOP concept of message (a kind of abstracted function call). I think
the current way of handling this is pretty much the simplest, or perhaps
there is a slightly simpler way of having the same functionality, that is
probably not worth migrating to (way too much compatibility trouble).

jMax has had those semantics changed from 2.5 to 4.0, and generally
speaking it's been a mess.

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Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju