[PD] pdmtl abstractions questions and comments

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2007, Hans wrote:

>> b) abstractions that finish with "_" are graphical abstractions.
>> Sometimes, we create an abstraction without a gui, then we create a
>> gui that wraps the same abstraction. The name of both abstractions
>> will be the same, except that the second version will have a "_"
>> appended.
> This sounds to me that you are exposing the implementation in the
> interface.

In this case, [hello] vs [hello_] have very different interfaces, because 
[hello] doesn't have a GUI and [hello_] has one, even though the rest of 
the interface (inlets/outlets/messages) may be the same.

> I disagree that 99% of programming is math, I'd say more like 9%. It's 
> much more logic than math

Math swallowed Logic, back in the 1800's. Not all of Logic, mind you, but 
at least the specific kind thereof that gets written in computer programs.

> "math" is a very broad term

very much agreed: many are led to think that math is all about numbers, 
but in undergrad math a lot of thing is about generic mental structures 
that you can't assume that they have to do with numbers. Nowadays numbers 
are just a very usual pattern found in math, not so much the core topic.

> If you are interested in the concept of mapping in the musical
> instrument context, here is a paper that illustrates the idea
> http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/546217.html

While the paper might be relevant in the context in which it was 
published, music is more than musical interfaces and pd is about more than 
music or audio. The original concept of mapping that they inspired 
themselves from, is that inputs gets associated to outputs; outputs depend 
on inputs; inputs are the things that outputs depend of. It doesn't have 
directly to do with numbers, but the first examples of mappings that 
people learn are usually one number input to one number output. The paper 
mentions multidimensional mappings (many-to-many connections).

(usually, one-to-one means "each combination of inputs causes a different 
combination of outputs" but this is not the case in that paper, where they 
are actually talking about the number of inputs and outputs)

> (written by people in Montreal :):

In this paper only 1 of 3 is in Montréal. I say that only because you make 
it sound like there were several of them, I don't mean it in any 
chauvinistic kind of way.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada