[PD] Pd META: Author/Help Patch Authors

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Sep 1, 2009, at 1:08 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

> --- On Tue, 9/1/09, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd META: Author/Help Patch Authors
>> To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at at.or.at>
>> Cc: pd-list at iem.at
>> Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 5:47 PM
>>
>>
>> --- On Tue, 9/1/09, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>>> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd META: Author/Help Patch Authors
>>> To: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>
>>> Cc: pd-list at iem.at
>>> Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 4:05 PM
>>>
>>> On Sep 1, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --- On Tue, 9/1/09, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>>>>> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd META: Author/Help Patch
>>> Authors
>>>>> To: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>
>>>>> Cc: pd-list at iem.at
>>>>> Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 5:00 AM
>>>>>
>>>>> It is Pd, so I think we should at least make
>> an
>>> effort to
>>>>> make things easy to parse in Pd.  I tried
>>> your parser
>>>>> using data that is probably closer to what
>> we
>>> might use, and
>>>>> it didn't work at all.   If someone
>>> can get a
>>>>> Pd parser working that can handle the commas
>> well,
>>> then I
>>>>> would be OK using commas in the meta data
>> format.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here's my data:
>>>>> tags - pure data, frequency modulation,
>> synthesis
>>>>
>>>> Hi Hans,
>>>>      I wouldn't expect my example
>>> to work as a general solution.  If you
>>>> want a general solution, I'd be happy to take a
>> stab
>>> at it, but you
>>>> haven't said what you want Pd to do with the
>> data
>>> example you've provided
>>>> above.
>>>
>>> Ah, sorry, I thought you'd followed the object_db.tcl
>>> plugin discussion and the [pd META] discussion with
>>> Frank.  Basically, the object_db.tcl plugin builds a
>>> multilevel menu for finding objects based on tags.
>> I'm
>>> am sure people will think of other uses for the
>> tags.
>>> Frank suggested using comma separated tags in his [pd
>>> REFERENCE] format, the PDDP group came to the
>> conclusion
>>> that the meta data should be easily parsable by Pd,
>> and I
>>> still think that's a good idea.
>>>
>>> So the idea is to have every help patch have a [pd
>> META]
>>> subpatch, and in it, have a comment with tags.
>>>
>>> .hc
>>
>> Oh, ok.  I'll have a look at that discussion.
>>
>> -Jonathan
>
> Yes, I have seen this discussion.  But I'm still confused: are commas
> a problem in tcl?  If not, I still don't understand the problem (see
> attached).
>
>
> <file.pd><parser.pd>


Tcl's not the problem, its Pd's parser.  It interprets commas as a  
separator between messages.  Since there isn't an escape mechanism, it  
means handling commas, semi-colons, etc. is difficult unless you are  
wanting the behavior of Pd's parser.

If we use commas as the delimiter for individual tags, then just  
removing the commas means you don't know if you have multi-word tags  
or just single word tags.  So if you have:

	tags - frequency modulation, synth

and its parsed as:

	tags frequency modulation synth

then key information is lost.

.hc


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