[PD] overriding objects

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2010, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> we've been discussing that at the LAC2008 in cologne,

back when it happened, there was no full report about it on pd-dev nor 
pd-list. It was just stated that a decision had been taken. From that 
point it really looked like this topic was not open for discussion. But 
it's not like it looked really open for discussion ever before.

> the idea was to attach a symbolic name to an atom (e.g. "float" or 
> "pdpackage") and in return receive a numeric id (atom.a_type), allowing 
> for multiple externals to use the same atom without having to hardcode 
> the numeric ID (assuming that symbolic names would be less susceptible 
> to clashes than arbitrary numbers; e.g. one could use a dns-like name 
> like "ca.gridflow.grid".

This namesystem needs not be any more complex than the namesystem of pd 
object classes. No-one is naming stuff like [at.iem.iemmatrix.mtx_*] nor 
[at/iem/iemmatrix/mtx_*] so I don't know why you would try to make it 
different for an atom-type registry. It doesn't need that disease. If you 
make it look like such namespacing is the way to go.

> the developer could then also provide an atom2string()-callback, that 
> would allow the atom_string() to make something more meaningful of the 
> new atom,

Yes, including saving it to a pd file, if it makes sense in such a context 
([textfile] or other).

> than printing "consistency check failed: atom_string" (without newline). 
> in the worst case (if no callback was provided),

In that case I'd like a more appropriate error message than that, such as 
"unknown atom type" and/or "no way to print this type of atom"

> atom_string() could at least print the atom-name, e.g. "gem_state 
> <at.iem.gem:state> <at.iem.gem:cache>"

more like <gemstate:083ba8c0> <gemcache:083bafe8>

> it was turned down, as it adds too much complexity to the code for too
> little advantages...

So how come the advantages are too little ? What are the advantages that 
were actually listed ?

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