[PD] hot and cold inlets don't always make sense

[Derek Holzer]

Hi Jurgen,

understanding hot and cold is essential to understanding the way Pd 
handles order of operations, so it's best to learn it right from the 
start. In your example, it is unclear/ambiguous whether the fine number 
gets sent to the add before or after the bang gets sent to the coarse 
number. (This is determined by creation order, which cannot be seen on 
the screen). This can lead to errors later.

The preferred way is to use [t b f], where the [f] outlet is connected 
to the cold side of the [+], and the [b] outlet is connected to the hot 
side of the [+]. A bang to the hot side of many objects tells it to do 
the same operation again with the information contained in the inlets. 
In this case, the hot inlet will have the previous number stored in it 
as well. All this is explained in Miller's HTML manual, the "control" 
documentation patches, and also in the in-progress Pd FLOSS Manual: 
http://en.flossmanuals.net/puredata

best!
Derek

Lao Yu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> when using an [+] object I find it most of the time counterproductive 
> that the right inlet is considered cold.
> 
> for example, if I want to use 2 different controls for 'coarse' and 
> 'fine' tuning parameters it is necessary to add them together. however 
> when changing 'fine' value which for instance is connected to the right 
> inlet the new value is only taken into consideration once the 'coarse' 
> value connected to the left inlet is changed as well.
> 
> the only workaround I found was to [bang] the hot inlet form the cold 
> one as illustrated in the attached patch. but I don't find that elegant.
> 
> is there a better way to make both inlets hot?

-- 
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 7:
"Accept advice"