[PD] FLOSS book Lists chapter

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Sun, 2/13/11, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] FLOSS book Lists chapter
> To: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at eds.org>, pd-list at iem.at
> Date: Sunday, February 13, 2011, 5:46 PM
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Jonathan Wilkes
> wrote:
> 
> > A false dichotomy is made between abstractions and
> externals.
> 
> Such a false dichotomy is also used on the front page of http://puredata.info/ :
> 
>   « It is easy to extend Pd by writing object
> classes ("externals") or
>     patches ("abstractions"). »

As well as in svn, where, for example, list-abs is in the abstractions 
folder, but there are plenty of libraries in "externals" that are made 
up only of abstractions.

> 
> I say that even though at the implementation level,
> abstractions aren't classes, for the user, it works like a
> class.
> 
> > Also there are many externals that don't include
> abstractions but are nonetheless compatible with Pd
> vanilla.
> 
> What part of the text are you referring to, in
> particular ?

The last sentence states that list-abs "doesn't require any externals so 
that it is compatible with vanilla Pd as well".

> 
> BTW, http://en.flossmanuals.net/PureData/Abstractions talks
> about "external patches", but given how "external" is being
> overwhelmingly used with a totally different meaning in Pd.
> (are newbies supposed to have to guess ?)
> 
> > "word or symbol" creates a false dichotomy.
> 
> what about the occurrence of "selector-word" in the
> Messages page ?

Yep, that, too.

> 
> > Also: it isn't made clear what is special about list
> messages as opposed to, say, blueberry messages, which I
> define as starting with the word blueberry followed by zero
> or more atoms*.
> 
> mmm, blueberries. :)
> 
> 
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