[PD] Best practice for abstractions with many parameters

[Phil Stone]

I've been playing with Jamie Bullock's 'a_grain' lately (see 
http://www.puredata.org/Members/jb/a_grain%7E/view ), and in order to 
understand it better, I've been refactoring it.

A_grain has 14 inputs to control various parameters; my first approach 
to cleaning it up was to put all the inlets, in the correct order, at 
the top of the patch -- I then connected those inlets to 'send' objects 
with $0 variables, placing matching 'receive's close by where they are 
needed.  This really cleaned up the wiring quite a bit, and made it 
easier to "read".

Now it occurs to me that I could eliminate the inlets entirely, and just 
write to send/receive pairs directly (perhaps also passing in a "prefix" 
as an argument that is prepended to all receives inside the abstraction, 
which would allow multiple instantiations of the abstraction, with 
independent control of each).  At the UI-level patch, I could use named 
senders (from number boxes, sliders, whatever) just hovering nearby the 
a_grain abstraction; no wires, no mess.

I'm wondering what experienced PD architects consider the best practice 
here; if the second approach is better, I begin to question the 
advisability of wired inlets for more than two or three arguments.  The 
left-to-right ordering of them, along with the rats-nest wiring caused 
by high numbers of inputs, seem to argue against them.  The only 
downside I can see to the second method is that if it's not done neatly, 
i.e., the senders are placed indiscriminately and not necessarily near 
the abstraction they're sending to -- it could become very hard to 
understand/maintain the patch.

I'll be interested to hear other PD user's thoughts on this.


Phil Stone
UC Davis