[PD] $0 in message boxes WAS: here I go again..dynamic abstractions

[Georg Werner]

Hi,

there were a lot of things thrown together in the last replies.
thanks for all your thoughts about abstraction arguments - but i never
talked about them. i only talked about $0 and that is not one of them.
and i wanted to bring more consistency into Pd (think of a $0 which
means at all times in all contexts this special number shifted by 1000 -
because of that i dont think it is very consistent to have
  > abstraction $0: set by pd, unique abs instance identifier, common to
all object boxes
  > message box $0: set by user through msg box, common to all
abstraction instance msg's
)

And another thing - not only about consistency (i've checked this only
on windows with pd-extended, maybe this is only happening in this
combination - i doubt it):
> a message-box works only on messages.
> a message-box is only a way to "freeze" a message in time (it's hard  
> to patch messages that only exist in an instant of time otherwise).
> it is concerned only with messages!
> 
in fact it is not hard - and message boxes not only freeze messages.
see the attachment: if you load a file through [openpanel] which has
spaces in its path or filename the messagebox is set to the whole path -
as expected? - even when you send this message again by clicking on the
messagebox [read $1( prints read and the whole path. As there is no
escape character/mechanism in Pd this is not consistent. And you see
this by saving, closing and reopening that Patch. Everything looks the
same, but the message behaves now as list (thats not how i understand
freezing)
should i file a bug report? i really liked the behaviour (i want an
escape-character/mechanism!) until i realized that its not working no
more after i saved a patch.
georg

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