[PD] colored/swooping cables

[robertgarvin at bellsouth.net]

Well.. I looked online at the program and saw how the lines were set up. I can sort of see how this would make reading the patch a bit eaiser, but you have to think, if you're making a patch that's got a command going to several different objects and you're pressed for space, then you're going to have a lot of cables very close to one another. if you have segmented lines stretching across the patch, and bending like they are in those schematics, it'd get very confusing to read. that might be where the color can come in... what did you mean by "easier to make"? does this express pcb just make circuit diagrams, or does it also show you what your schematic will do (ie if you have blinking LED's, can you run it and it show you blinking LEDs)?

-Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: federico [mailto:xaero at inwind.it] 
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 3:20 PM
To: robertgarvin at bellsouth.net; jsynthlib-list
Subject: Re: [PD] colored/swooping cables

robertgarvin at bellsouth.net wrote:

>I was looking around online and saw this website:
>http://lab.andre-michelle.com/
>if you scroll down to the "velocity" category, and click on cables, it bring up a very interesting idea. Is there an extern that makes one of the following:
>1. colored cables (in the main window, not some gui thing. but in the place where most patches are normally made).
>OR
>2. Swooping cables (i think this would be rather bothersome though, having cables swoop all over the place, etc.)
>thanks,
>Robert
>  
>
i would prefer "intelligent cables".

this is a feature that PCB software has (tools for designing circuits).
given a netlist (here, a collection of inlets) with nodes that should be 
connected together, the program find the best path for each connection, 
i.e. by following a grid. (there are well known algorithms about this)

this "best" path should be a segmented (or bezier, or exp, or ...) line 
that try to not accross wires nor objects, to make reading (and MAKING) 
a patch easier, especially in the cases of many->one inlet or vice-versa 
(or other situations i don't remember ;)).

what do you think about it?

-- 
Federico