[PD] Idiomatic Pd

Frank Barknecht fbar at footils.org
Tue Jul 29 07:31:58 CEST 2008


Hallo,
Luke Iannini hat gesagt: // Luke Iannini wrote:

> There are some amazing sets of abstractions being released recently,
> which has served to highlight the many extant styles of patching.  I
> was wondering if there was interest in establishing a set of
> guidelines for patching in the vein of PEP 8 for Python; I've found
> that document to be very relaxing as it is a standardized approach to
> OCD.  More seriously, it greatly helps when reading other people's
> code or collaborating.
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

I think, it would be important to first collect every possible style
element in the wild and document what people are using in reality.
That would be interesting. I'm not too much in favour of a style "guide"
however. Let people be creative.

> I've begun to collect some of my practices to start things off. 

I added where I do things different.

> I was
> hoping we could all lazy-vote the document together in this thread and
> I'll then compile it into a PdPedia/Pd.info document.  So, feel free
> to object to or replace my propositions.
> 
> Style:
> * If giving $0 as an argument to an abstraction, it is always first in
> the argument list [1]

I often put it last (and it's specified to be that way e.g. in
Memento)

> * * When possible, pass parent arguments in numeric order, like [child
> $0 $1 $2 other1 other2] etc.
> * Sends and Receives are written in camelCase, with "R" appended to
> complementary receives (e.g. in GUIs, $0mySlider for the send and
> $0mySliderR for the receive)

I use the underscore style sometimes but often a simple "dash" style:
"r some-thing" instead of camelCase. My reason: It doesn't need any
Shift-key-combinations on German keyboards, and I find camelCase hard
to read.

When I want to name matching send/receive pairs I use $0-some-s and
$0-some-r. 

> * When prepending $0 to a symbol, only add a "-" to separate it from
> another number, like [r $0-1stSend].  Otherwise the symbol should
> immediately follow, like [r $0mySend].

I always seperate $0 with a $0-dash. $0myGod is easy to misunderstand.

> * When working with stereo, Left and Right pairs are written with Le
> and Ri appended (to distinguish them from an R denoting "receive",
> above)

Nice idea. I never did that, though.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                                     _ ______footils.org__




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