[PD] Need Help Understanding pack

[Frank Barknecht]

Hi,

On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 07:55:20PM -0800, Theron Trowbridge wrote:
> That worked very nicely.  I had to change the until input to 4 to get it to
> do the right number of iterations, since the input didn't also kick off the
> loop, but that's fine.

Btw: IMO it really helps to lay out your patches in a left-aligned matter, so
everything, that happens last, also is on the left side. It's just cosmetics,
but makes patches easier to read. For example, I would move the [0] object with
"initialize [int] to 0 -->" to the right of the [4( message. 

Try to read patched objects right-to-left and top-to-bottom.

> Now...  I have another [pipe 0] object in the button_handler sub-patch which
> delays a message while a [expr] object does its thing.  Replacing it with a
> [trigger] doesn't work.  But it's not coordinated with the other outputs of
> the [unpack] object.

You don't need the [pipe], if you connect objects correctly. In fact, [pipe]
makes it harder to get things right here, because it breaks the usual
"depth-first execution order", which you don't need to break here.

Again, left-alignement helps thinking about and reading patches. See the
subpatch for a solution without pipe - and without triggers as well. [trigger]
is important, but only when objects don't have enough outlets themselves.
[unpack 0 0 0] already has three outlets that, just like [t f f f] fire from
left to right, so triggering explicitly is not needed. 

What is needed however are correct connections. 

> Is there an object like [trigger] that has multiple inputs and lets you
> control the timing of the outputs?  [pipe] can take multiple inputs but
> doesn't have the same right-to-left coordinated output that [trigger] does.

Oh, [pipe] does have the same coordinated output like trigger, it also fires
right-to-left!  But you need to make a [pipe 0 0 0 0 0] with more than one
outlet to see that.

> The FLOSS manual says that the order you hook things up in part determines
> the order they do things.  But I can't make that make a difference.

Just forget completely about this. The order you create connections matters in
reality, but never, ever rely on it when patching. Treat every patch as if
someone else created it and as if you'd have no idea, what order he made the
connections. 

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht            Do You RjDj.me?          _ ______footils.org__
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