[PD] declare [was: Re: Idiomatic Pd]

Matt Barber brbrofsvl at gmail.com
Thu Jul 31 10:24:30 CEST 2008


>> i question, if someone is seriously voting for the 'relative to parent'
>> approach, since it is full of troubles:
>
> I think, I do. (if seriously is another question...)
> to me an abstraction is like an include function (like for example in php).
> let's say I create an abstraction that plays soundfiles and the filename
> can be given as an argument or messages, then I want to write
> [mysfplayer sounds/1.wav]. in this case, I want the file be relative to
> the "parent" patch, because the parent patch will be in my project
> folder, but the abstraction will be somewhere in an abstraction directory.


Right -- is an abstraction like an include (macro?)?  Or is it more
like a c file which is separately compiled and linked?  Or is it like
a class definition which can have multiple instances, and might have a
distinction between "public" and "private?"  I don't think any of
these analogies is quite general enough to be satisfactory.  Your
example is more complicated if your [mysfplayer] also lives in a
different subdirectory -- is there a consistent (and/or idiot-proof)
way of finding sounds/1.wav?

I think I prefer the 'relative to topmost' approach as well, if only
because I tend to want to think of abstractions as objects.  The
problem is, for most built-ins your path is declared at startup or in
the parent patch, so things get a little itchier -- you need to be
able to allow the path to be declared in the main patch, but you need
to have an abstraction whose file might be located somewhere deep in
that path inherit from the main patch the absolute paths of resources
located in other directories, which is a little different problem than
what happens to a declare inside an abstraction.  Depending on how
things are defined, you could have soundfiles living in the same
directory as the main patch which an abstraction living in a
subdirectory can't find using the same name.


For myself, I'd like to make some of the ideas I've seen in recent
posts more explicit so I know I'm understanding the problems
correctly.

So then let's say you have a complicated abstraction called
[GUI_ambi_pan~].pd which you keep in ./GUI_ambi_pan/ (relative to the
main patch), and you've defined it in such a way that stereo
soundfiles which store, say, realtime azimuth and elevation
coefficients, can be passed to it with $2.  For it to act
transparently like an object you need it to inherit access to
everything the patch it's instantiated in has access to pathwise, and
with the same name, and again this is a deeper problem than what a
[declare] inside an abstraction does.

On the other hand, let's say it also has a junkload of helper
abstractions located in ./GUI_ambi_pan/helpers (similar, maybe, to a
set of static functions in a C file or the private functions in a
class definition), you might want a way to insulate the main patch
from the abstraction's helpers -- or the flip side is you don't want
the main patch to need to know about the abstraction's helpers in
order to have them instantiated.  A "public/private" distinction for
sets of abstractions would still have to be defined pathwise.




If these are the problems, it leads me to believe that perhaps the
-path syntax is too ambiguous to effect sufficient generality to be of
any required specific use for relative paths inside of abstractions --
it might help the problem to have different flags for different
situations (at least the following):

1) a switch for globally declaring that abstractions inherit the
absolute paths using names defined relative to the parent (like
declaring generally that abstractions behave like objects, using names
you would use for built-ins).

1.1) a switch for inside an abstraction declaring that it will search
for files using names relative to its parent (this abstraction should
behave like an object).



2) a switch for inside an abstraction to export a path setting from a
child to its parent, with the path defined relative to the parent
(treats the abstraction more like a macro - you could use this e.g. to
define a main patch's path using an abstraction, which might be useful
for complex declarations in something like a sandbox environment --
the same as just using the [declare -path ...] in the main patch, but
as a ready-made set of things to include).

2.1) a switch for inside an abstraction  to export an absolute path
setting from a child to its parent, with the path defined relative to
the child (I'm trying to think of a good use for this -- maybe if you
wanted [soundfiler] and [my_groove_box~] to be able to access
"sounds/johnson.wav" which lives in a subdirectory "sounds" of the
directory my_groove_box~.pd lives in, and access it by the same name
-- I don't think this is particularly useful and might be logically
inconsistent).


3) a switch for inside an abstraction  to declare a "local" path
relative to an abstraction's file (and by default unknown to the
parent unless also declared there) -- probably overrides 1) just for
this path?  In this case, if 2) or 2.1) is used for this path as well,
you're using the abstraction as a kind of hybrid object/macro, where
path is relative to the actual files -- there could be a global switch
for this, too, or it could be the default.

3.1) a switch for inside an abstraction to declare that such a "local"
path is also "private" (or "static," etc.)... probably overrides 1)
just for this path?  also throws an error when the same absolute path
is declared by its parent.  Also throws an error when this same path
is declared using a 2) or 2.1) switch.


4) a large set of error messages which are thrown when some path
declaration is logically inconsistent, ambiguous, or when a resource
or directory defined relatively is multiply defined somewhere in the
search path -- and very well-defined default behaviors in the presence
of an error (like with multiple [send~]'s with the same name).

5) a "madcap hijinks" solution, which would be to allow search paths
to be defined recursively -- [declare -path -r ./100_folders/] grabs
everything in that directory including its subdirectories and their
subdirectories.  This could be extremely useful in some situations,
but breaky-breaky in a great deal of others.  Harder to make proper
and useful checks, and the error messages thrown concise and
meaningful.

So what happens if 1.1) and 3) are set for two different directories,
but it finds a file with the same name in both of them (and it's not
the same file)?

I guess the bottom line for me is that I'm okay with fuzzy or dumb
[declare] statements breaking patches as long as proper errors are
thrown and errant states are handled consistently -- I feel like the
problem is just syntactical enough to be solved logically, and we
should not throw up our hands at the possibility that someone could
define paths wrong or ambiguously, or that it might be complicated to
do it correctly in a way that allows sufficient generality and
consistency at once.


What I worry about is that solving anything like this might
necessitate unwelcome changes to the current way paths are defined,
which is why I would support adding flags to change the current
(default) behavior, and enough flags to make this thing as expressive
and powerful as needed.

Wow, I need to get to bed.  Sorry for the long post.

Matt




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