[PD] Hot inlet position

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

> I think jmax phoenix has scoping.

That's not what I was alluding to. It was about this part of the paper:

   This decision was made to remove a layer of complexity that didn't seem
   to be strictly necessary in the context of computer music production, in
   order to make Max as accessible as possible to people who aren't
   professional computer programmers.

Well, I don't think it's the «real» (or «main») reason for it. Local 
scoping did not happen, because Pd doesn't need local variables. Local 
variables are not needed because named variables aren't particularly 
needed either. Named variables are not needed because cold inlets act as 
unnamed variables. After that much of a reduction of the need for local 
scoping, you have a situation in which the reasons against local scoping 
have a lot more relative weight...!

about jMax... I don't think we should bother talking again about jMax... 
but I'm not going to prevent people from summoning the dead.

> Does DesireData?

On pd-list and/or pd-dev, I wrote some proposals about how the 
local-scoping could be. I don't recall getting feedback. Those ideas 
haven't been really integrated in the plans of DesireData. Depends on 
what's considered wrong with the current fake-local solutions. If it's 
mostly a matter of symbol pollution, then a plan to make symbols 
"biodegradable" would go a long way. I have a quite detailed plan about 
this, ... but it's just a plan. I mean it's a good plan, but it's not an 
implementation.

Fake-local scope like we have with $0-foo isn't necessarily wrong. It's 
not any more wrong than current namespacing solutions (which also use 
symbol concatenation from start to end). Ideally I'd rather have it not 
use actual concatenation, for various reasons, but I wouldn't bother 
with a change that isn't well-enough integrated with the existing pd 
and the existing uses of pd.

> What's the status of DesireData these days, anyway?

Officially resumed, but semi-on-hold. I'm trying to "institutionalise" it 
a little bit so that I have more of an incentive to work on it steadily.

> It looks like the roadmap hasn't been updated for quite a while.

What roadmap?... There wasn't an actual thing named "roadmap" until this 
spring, when I started trying to sort out items in the TODO list by 
priority... but it's very long to do so... especially when one thinks it's 
a good idea to take the time reserved on the roadmap, to actually try to 
fix bugs listed in the TODO, just so that they don't have to be listed in 
the roadmap. ;) (I did that).

Anyway... I will finally be able to say that there's an official roadmap 
soon, in the end.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec