[PD] Pd-extended 0.43 updates: lots of new editing features

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Mon, 7/11/11, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] Pd-extended 0.43 updates: lots of new editing features
> To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at at.or.at>
> Cc: "Jonathan Wilkes" <jancsika at yahoo.com>, pd-list at iem.at
> Date: Monday, July 11, 2011, 4:30 PM
> On Sun, 10 Jul 2011, Hans-Christoph
> Steiner wrote:
> 
> > On page 32 of this document:
> > http://peabody.sapp.org/class/dmp2/read/WritingMax_MSPExternals.pdf
> > You can see the 'assist' message.  The Max GUI
> sends the 'assist' message to an objectclass when you hover
> above an inlet or outlet,
> 
> It's sent to the object, not to the objectclass.
> 
> It's similar to the "dsp" method in that it's a special
> method-entry registered with A_CANT, but otherwise it's the
> same : it's registered in the objectclass so that it's
> callable in the object. It's just not available from Max
> itself, as A_CANT means that its input is not a Max
> message.

Does A_CANT actually work?  If I do [dsp(---[+~] it crashes pd 0.43, and if I add a "foo" method to [bang] using A_CANT I can still send [foo(--[bang] and it will still run the method that I added.

Also, what if someone is parsing arbitrary sequences of anythings-- say, with [route] or any number of other objects that have an anything method?  Now those objectclasses have to choose between truly accepting any selector, or being helpful and having a tooltip.  Also problems with anything outlets: for instance, [textfile] (which I've mentioned before) outputs an anything, which could possibly start with whatever symbol you attach to tooltips, thus making that message practically unusable (though unlike say "float blah" you won't get an error message).

Unfortunately there are still lots of "anything operators" out there in the wild, and probably always will be, so I don't think it's a good idea to reserved a selector for a general feature like this. 

Here's an idea:

* bind xlet rectangles to pdtk_tooltips for <Enter> and <Leave>
* have a menu checkbutton for "Turn on tooltips"
* if turned on, pdtk_tooltips sends the mouse location as args to canvas_tooltips (and whether we're entering or leaving)
* canvas_tooltips checks to see if there's a box under the mouse, and if there is and it has a tooltip string, display the text in a little rectangle on the canvas.
* on <Leave>, delete the tooltip.

But I'm not sure where to store the tooltip string...

-Jonathan


> 
> I don't know anything about Max, but Max's addmess looks
> the same as Pd's class_addmethod, and A_CANT is exactly the
> same, and so are many other things when I browse around in
> that manual.
> 
> 
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>