[PD] select issues

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Nov 30, 2007, at 12:09 PM, Claude Heiland-Allen wrote:

> Martin Peach wrote:
>> Claude Heiland-Allen wrote:
>>> Why doesn't [select 1 2 3 4] have 5 inlets and 5 outlets?
>>>
>>> Wouldn't break old patches, but could be useful in some  
>>> circumstances.
>>
>> Maybe it would make more sense if [select] accepted messages like  
>> [set 5 4 3
>> 2( on its single inlet and rejected lists.  [select]'s current  
>> method for
>> list handling is just pd's default behaviour when an object has no  
>> list
>> method of its own.
>
> I disagree:  multiple inlets allow different parts to be set
> independently, and pd's default behaviour is common among many  
> objects,
> which makes it easier to learn once.

 From what I've seen, this shortcut that applies lists across inlets  
is directly responsible for the structures that cause a lot of the  
list/non-list confusion, and strange situations like this.  It's  
entrenched, so I don't think it will be removed from or changed in pd- 
vanilla.

But I was just thinking about it, I think it would make more sense if  
there was a standard selector to trigger this behavior, something like:

[inlets 1 5(

Then we could have [select] do the more natural thing and pass stuff  
out the right outlet unchanged.

.hc



------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----

As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be  
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and  
this we should do freely and generously.         - Benjamin Franklin