[PD] Pd FLOSS Manual Update pt 1

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 12 11:33:01 CEST 2009





--- On Sun, 4/12/09, Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:

> From: Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org>
> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd FLOSS Manual Update pt 1
> To: pd-list at iem.at
> Date: Sunday, April 12, 2009, 8:29 AM
> Hallo,
> Jonathan Wilkes hat gesagt: // Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> 
> > I agree that meta-messages should be called
> meta-messages, if 
> > they're called anything.  But I don't see how
> to make the 
> > distinction clear without having a comprehensive table
> of relevant 
> > pd-vanilla objects and their behavior regarding
> meta-messages.
> > Why do the first inlets of pack and symbol accept
> [pitch( ?
> > Why wouldn't the secondary inlets of pack and
> symbol accept 
> > [pitch( ?
> 
> Or their behaviour regarding data messages: Why doesn't
> the first inlet of
> float accept symbol-messages? *Of course* you have to learn
> each object's
> behaviour to be able to use it. But if nobody tells you
> that there's a
> difference between "pitch" and "symbol
> pitch" many of the object's behaviour
> will seem arcane to you. 
> 
> In fact I believe, that beginners have difficulites to
> understand messages
> because their tutors ignore these issues. Maybe they ignore
> them because they
> themselves feel uncomfortable with messages, meta-messages,
> symbols and other
> magic things - and a tutor needs to understand a topic in a
> much deeper way
> than his student.

I'm not comfortable with the right inlet of [symbol] rejecting [pitch(, nor with [pitch( working only in the first inlet of pack.
And not so comfortable really with [list one two(--[route one]
behaving differently than [list 1 2(--[route 1].

> 
> But people are way too scared of meta-messages. They are
> nothing special. If
> you understand the difference between "symbol"-
> and "float"- messages, there
> is no problem understanding the difference between a
> "float"- and a
> "set"-message or between a "symbol" and
> a "read"-messages. And you surely are
> using these messages all the time. 

Maybe they're nothing special to you because you already understand
and are comfortable with all the special cases.  But I can
imagine a beginner getting really confused over [route symbol]
not stripping the selector off of [symbol pitch(.  It's confusing
and inconsistent, and symbols/lists in Pd are limited enough that
a comprehensive list of behaviors for the basic symbol-handling
objects is doable.  (see below)

> 
> > Why does the second inlet of [list] accept [pitch( but
> the first 
> > inlet of [makefilename %s] doesn't?
> 
> [list] objects accept everything and convert all incoming
> messages to data
> messages, i.e. to list-messages. [list trim] converts back
> to meta messages. 
> 
> > How do message-box dollar signs handle meta-messages?
> 
> They take the first element as selector, and then start
> counting from there. 
> 
> > How does [list length] handle them?
> 
> See above: Like all [list]-objects it first converts to a
> list.
> 
> > Do you need [list trim] to route a float list by the
> first value?
> 
> No but it doesn't hurt.
> 
> Ciao
> -- 
> Frank
> 
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