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

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Sat, 7/16/11, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] implementing tooltips WAS: Pd-extended 0.43 updates: lots of new editing features
> To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" <hans at at.or.at>
> Cc: "pd-list" <pd-list at iem.at>, "Martin Peach" <martin.peach at sympatico.ca>
> Date: Saturday, July 16, 2011, 6:11 PM
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Hans-Christoph
> Steiner wrote:
> 
> > This leads to the question: should tooltip messages be
> per-instance or per-class?  It could easily just be a
> field with a standard name in each object's struct, then it
> would be a simple per-class implementation.  Having an
> 'assist' method means that the external writer can decide
> whether the string is per-class or per-instance.
> 
> Yes... whichever is appropriate. But the default
> assist-method should be designed so that in most cases,
> externals don't need to have a custom assist-method.
> 
> >> I don't see a need to extend any structs, Pd just
> needs to call an object's assist method whenever the mouse
> is hovering over one of its inlet/outlets,
> 
> A default assist-method needs to be storing data somewhere,
> and it cannot automatically pickup inlet names from anywhere
> in an external's source code. It has to be stored in some
> data-structures... For example, in both t_class and t_inlet
> (for nonproxy inlets).

Is it possible in c to parse a help file for "OUTLET_0 float symbol"?  That's what I'm currently doing (which is trivial on the tcl side).

Actually the way I do it, you parse on the fly only when the mouse hovers over the xlet (which you could toggle with a menu button).

> 
> > This is an important point that Jonathan brings up: if
> we add an 'assist' method, that could mess up anything that
> ever sent a message that started with 'assist'.
> 
> Then just do it like it is for savefn and propertiesfn. You
> see, it doesn't have to be something that goes through
> class_addmethod. The 'assist' symbol issue is not an
> argument against defining an assist-method because it could
> be a field named assistfn directly in t_class.

What do I have to do to register a new "assistfn"?  I don't really understand that part of the source code.

> 
> 
> _______________________________________________________________________
> | Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ----
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