[PD] jMax Phoenix

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Wed Sep 22 18:04:49 CEST 2010


On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, Maurizio De Cecco wrote:

> For the record, jMax Phoenix support the jMax 2.x API, not the 4; the 
> APIs are extended wrt 2.x, but in a backward compatible way.

Ah, that's good. What motivated you to go back to the 2.x API ?

> I would call it a bug (even fatal), no a showstopper; ok, a fatal bug 
> *is* a showstopper if there is nobody able to fix it :->, or anybody 
> there to listen to complaints, but now there is.

The syntax has changed such that [myclass + 42] is a syntax error caused 
by a new feature, so it doesn't look very fixable. I needed to pass the 
plus-sign as $1, and 42 as $2.

I didn't want to go through all my patches changing + to "add" and * to 
"mul" (etc) and I didn't want to have to use it like that, especially 
while Pd allowed me to keep the same syntax... In the end, for me, the 
transition from jMax2 to Pd was smoother than from jMax2 to jMax4.

But it doesn't matter to me now, as my code doesn't support jMax since 
2004 or 2005, ... it's all far behind now.

> For example, using the new paradigm there would be *no* need of something equivalent
> to the pd '$0-foo';

In jMax4 all receive-symbols were local. Not only that's completely 
incompatible with jMax2, that's another feature removal because there was 
no way to have global receive-symbols.

> In the process, we probably throw away the baby with the bath water, wrt 
> simplicity of the language.

Simplicity of the language isn't completely necessary, and it often pays 
off to have complex syntax, but simple syntax pays off too, in different 
situations. Because of this, for example, Pd has [expr], and Tcl has 
[expr] too. Both cases are remarkably similar because the [expr] of each 
language is there to complement a simple syntax language with a complex 
syntax component.

> The point is not to be competitive with pd, is more matter to see things 
> going on, and produce new ideas and system that may have their role and 
> use.

If it can't compete with Pd, then it can't be very relevant.

jMax has its upsides, but people will use Pd anyway, because Pd has more 
upsides.

  _______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu Bouchard ------------------------------ Villeray, Montréal, QC


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