[PD] [out-of-the-blue] a neat GUI feature?

[João Pais]

> why complicated metadata if you can already do [inlet~ channel1] and  
> [outlet activity] in an abstraction/subpatch? afaik arguments to those  
> objects currently are ignored, but i do use them sometimes to make me  
> remember their function.

several reasons:

- unless you want a really big box there, you should only use a symbol  
(i.e. one word) for the inlets
- to see these symbols (they can't even be considered as comments, it's  
not the same), you have to open the abstraction. if you go to open the  
abstraction, then it's easier to leave a normal comment there. the purpose  
of the idea was to save the work of opening the abstraction. just like you  
can always know what number is coming out of any object, just connect it  
to a number box; but if you are debugging, you have to be constantly  
putting in number boxes and connecting them (and later deleting them)
- you wouldn't be able to see these comments on an external, without the  
"metadata"
- if you decide to change the inlet~ "comment" in a patch already  
programmed, the connections will break when the object is redrawn. that's  
a not very coherent behaviour, but it's there. the metadata would be  
somewhere else in the patch.

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