[PD] PdDefinitions

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Go ahead a make a page in the PdDefinitions section and add this  
stuff.  That's what it's there for.

.hc

On Sep 29, 2007, at 2:54 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

>
> some help for writing your http://puredata.org/dev/ 
> PdDefinitions ... those are surely not the best wordings, but it  
> adds detail.
>
> comma (atom type): a comma character that is not backslashed, and  
> thus is effective as a message separator in a messagebox.
>
> semicolon (atom type): a semicolon character that is not  
> backslashed, and thus is effective as a message separator in any  
> context. if there was any implicit context (as in a messagebox),  
> semicolon forgets it, and thus you get to write an explicit  
> receiver after every semicolon.
>
> dollar (in general): a nonbackslashed dollar sign followed by one  
> or more digits. in an evaluation, this can be worth a float, symbol  
> or pointer, whatever the corresponding argument in the argument  
> list is.
>
> dollar (atom type): a dollar that is parsed individually; is  
> replaced by the corresponding atom upon evaluation.
>
> dollsym (atom type) (missing): in pd 0.39 and earlier: a dollar  
> (subtitutor) that is at the beginning of an atom, followed by  
> symbol characters. Upon substitution it becomes a symbol, as the  
> corresponding atom gets cast to characters and the symbols are  
> merged to make one resulting symbol.
>
> dollsym (atom type) (missing): in pd 0.40 and earlier: any  
> alternation of dollar (subtitutor) and normal symbol characters.  
> All those dollar substitutors get replaced by corresponding atoms  
> cast to characters and all the parts are merged to make one  
> resulting symbol.
>
> (The backslashing stuff may be important to understand if you  
> expect to modify or generate patches using [textfile] like some  
> people do; in general it's good for understanding the fileformat)
>
> Personally, I called "float" "symbol" "pointer" the stable atoms,  
> whereas I call "comma" "semi" "dollar" "dollsym" the radioactive  
> atoms, because they decay upon being used by messageboxes. the  
> radioactive atoms also only really stay alive inside of  
> messageboxes, so in general in pd you will only see functions/ 
> methods for handling stable atoms, not radioactive ones.
>
> I could've put this in the wiki directly, but wanted to make sure  
> it gets noticed (and also I'd like some feedback and to know what  
> you'd change in this). Are there any automatic notifications of  
> changes of wiki pages on puredata.info (as a configurable option,  
> per user) ? I mean by email, just like for sf's bug tracker. It  
> would be good to have this so that all parties involved in  
> modifying pages really know about what's going on. It gives the  
> advantages of mailing-lists to wikis.
>
>  _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
> | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada



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