[PD] style guide idea: [send foo] versus [; foo(

Frank Barknecht fbar at footils.org
Sat Mar 21 19:06:35 CET 2009


Hallo,
Mathieu Bouchard hat gesagt: // Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> On Fri, 20 Mar 2009, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>
>> For example I'd rather start with making people properly left-align  
>> their patches and avoid crossing patch cords
>
> well, I do my best to reduce the number of crossings, but if I have to  
> avoid crossings completely, I'll just avoid Pd...
>
> Pd doesn't make it easy to avoid crossings.
>
> Not all crossings are even bad. Crossings that are ambiguous-looking are  
> very bad. Too many crossings in the same area is bad, except if the  
> crossings are very regular-looking (a line crossing a bunch of parallel  
> lines is more orderly than a line crossing a bunch of random-angled  
> lines).

Yeah, lets not turn a style guide into a style law.

Sometimes crossings are not avoidable indeed. You also have to weight
crossings against other layout questions, like preferring straight
vertical lines and left-alignment. I think, when laying out my patches
I seem to go like that: 

1) avoid crossings

2) if that doesn't work, then try to avoid patch cords crossing over
   objects, i.e. prefer cords crossing other cords only

3) if you really have to cross over objects, make the patch cords go
   in straight vertical lines (straight vertical cords are the best cords
   anyway)

4) even then avoid crossing over object inlets or outlets, as it is
   ambiguous which cords are connected.

Here's a patch that shows me failing all the way up to 3), but not 4):
http://footils.org/images/adsr-envelope-pipe.png

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht            Do You RjDj.me?          _ ______footils.org__




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