[PD] http, html and textfiles

[mark edward grimm]

hello,

If we WERE going to use just pd for longer text type
processing, what optimization methods would be
recommended?

Is there a particular font that PD handles better than
others?
Would it be wise to strip text of "backslashes,
spaces, commas...." as im assuming from your post?
Can PD grab a random 'line' from a text file so as not
to have to load the whole thing?

Thanks
mark


--- Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:

> Hallo,
> wolfgang schwarzenbrunner hat gesagt: // wolfgang
> schwarzenbrunner wrote:
> 
> > i am working on a little project in which websites
> are going to be 
> > parsed. well. i thought this might be a nice thing
> using the regex 
> > object from zexy... the only problem i am facing
> right now is that i 
> > have no idea how i could get a html file on my
> harddisk using pd 
> > (something like a http browsing object)...
> > 
> > any suggestions?
> 
> Yep: Don't use Pd for text processing.
> 
> Pd is good at many things, but it's not good at
> parsing and modifying
> larger amounts of text. AFAIK there still is no
> garbage collection for
> unused symbols (Pd's "strings"), it's
> overcomplicated to deal with
> certain characters (backslashes, spaces, commas,
> ...) when they should
> not be interpreted by Pd etc.
> 
> What I would recommend is to do your text processing
> in a different
> language. Many (scripting) languages that are great
> with text can be
> used inside of Pd: Lua, Python, Java, Scheme, etc.
> Most of these also
> include or can be extended easily with nice web
> browsing tools (CURL,
> Socket, system("wget") ...). In the end you can do
> both the browsing and
> all processing in one place and then only need to
> feed the results over
> to Pd in a format, Pd can handle with more elegance
> than it can handle
> large amounts of text.
> 
> Of course it depends a bit on how complex your
> project is, so you may
> get away with pure Pd as well, but IMO it's a better
> use of Pd to
> externalize the text processing to a language better
> suited.
> 
> Ciao
> -- 
> Frank Barknecht
> 
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____________________
mark edward grimm | m.f.a | ed.m
syracuse u. | vpa foundations | timearts
adjunct | new media consultant
megrimm.net | socialmediagroup.org & .com   
mgrimm at syr.edu | 315.378.2136
________________________________________