[PD] 200 voices of timbre-space navigation

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Nov 23, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 11:57:26AM -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
> wrote:
>> On Nov 23, 2010, at 3:52 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>>> Is there a special reason tha I'm missing for voicepoly using   
>>> [initbang]
>>> instead of [loadbang]?
>>
>> It makes the coding much easier, IMHO.  Also, it gives the  
>> possibilities
>> for dynamically creating inlets and outlets.  But the objects don't
>> currently do that, so I am open to someone converting them to use
>> [loadbang].  They do require ggee/getdir tho, I think there is no
>> replacement for that.  I just got rid of a zexy requirement, so its
>> currently [initbang] and [ggee/getdir] AFAIR.
>
> The problem with initbang is that currently it requires a patched  
> version of Pd
> so it's not as easy to install as an external. Unless you create  
> inlets or
> outlets dynamically, initbang IMO is superflous and patching with  
> loadbang is
> almost as easy: Just add one "loadbang" message box and trigger it  
> at the end.

It is true that [initbang] is not easy to use with Pd-vanilla. I think  
its a good idea to use [loadbang] instead, as long as it provides the  
same functionality.  I'll try it.

> Creating inlets/outlets dynamically can be useful, but actually it  
> would be
> most useful to get rid of the nasty wrapper abstractions, but for  
> that you'd
> ideally need a way to detect the number of inlets/outlets a  
> dynamically created
> object has. I think, iemguts has something for that.  The rj polys  
> don't use
> wrappers, but they require your abstractions to be designed  
> specially, for
> instance midi-note pairs in and stereo outs. In practice this is  
> sufficient in
> many cases.

Check out bundle, instances, and instances~.  They don't use the  
wrapper abstraction.  But they also don't do voice allocation  
management.  To do that without the wrapper abstraction would be the  
real win.  I guess that would be possible using your dynamic send  
technique, perhaps keeping a list of busy instances.  I guess you are  
using [poly] to do the voice allocation, which doesn't work for more  
generic things.

> I didn't look in detail at how [getdir] is used, but for the rj poly  
> objects we
> just require that the things you want to create dynamically are in  
> your search
> path, just like for [polypoly]. I think, that's probably a reasonable
> assumption.


That's a dangerous assumption on anything but a small, tightly  
controlled system.  That takes us back to the bad old days when if you  
used an external library, chances are your patch would not run on  
anyone else's machine.  A library should work regardless of the user's  
path setup, etc.  getdir is used to get the full path to the  
abstraction that's given to the poly object, and then each instance is  
created using the full path.

ggee uses the Tcl/Tk license, so I think you would be able to  
distribute it via the Apple iTunes store (i.e. not GPL).

.hc




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