[PD] "get" method for Pd

[Miller Puckette]

This leads to an interesting larger design issue.  I've so far resisted
the idea of using send/receive as a back channel for getting return
values because of the unreadablity of the resulting patch.  So, for
instance, samplerate~ just puts the sample rate on its outlet.  The other
way, assuming you want locality, would be to confect a unique symbol name
and then somehow to "receive" it (I'm not even sure that's possible without
making a self-editing patch).

But there are other situation which seem to beg for the "receive" solution.
For example you have a complicated object like textfile and you just want to
query it as to how many lines it has.

although it's migraine-inducing, the neatest solution would be to allow
"info" style objects to have a right-hand outlet that you connect to, say,
the "textfile" object like so:

[get linecount(
 |
 |
[textfile -reference]
 |                 |
 |                [textfile]
 V
[15<

(where "15" would be the number of lines in the lower textfile object).  I
think Krzystof Chaya did something like this in his wonderful "xeq" object
(first Pd convention, Graz.)

cheers
Miller

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 01:01:50PM -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> 
> I like "info" too, maybe [pd info(.  I like Jonathan's ordering because it also makes it easy to have a default receive symbol, so :
> 
>  [;pd info(
> 
> would dump all the info to:
> 
>  [receive pd]
>  |
>  [route info]
> 
> Then you could also specify specific things to request:
> 
>  [; pd info dsp(
> 
> would dump:
> 
>  [receive pd]
>  |
>  [route info]
>  |
>  [route dsp]
> 
> As for GUI-related things, I think 'pd-gui' should have its own 'pd-gui' receive listener, so you direct GUI-related stuff to [send pd-gui].
> 
> .hc
> 
> On Nov 17, 2011, at 12:13 PM, Miller Puckette wrote:
> 
> > Unfortunately I already used the name "get" for something else but I
> > agree this should be an object, maybe 'get-info" or even just "info".
> > It could get and/or set info about the canvas it's in as well as about
> > other canvases (by name) and Pd globally.  
> > 
> > cheers
> > Miller
> > 
> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 03:12:08PM +0100, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >> 
> >> On 2011-11-17 15:09, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
> >>> On 2011-11-17 14:53, Patrice Colet wrote:
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>> would this method provide patch window size and position?
> >>> 
> >>>> [; pd get size pd-mpatch.pd rcv_name(
> >>>> [; pd get pos pd-mpatch.pd rcv_name(
> >>> 
> >>> now we are getting close to why i think using "get <rcvname> ..." is
> >>> better than "get <verb> <rcvname>"
> >> 
> >> but of course jonathan and roman are right when they say that this is
> >> not something you would ask "pd" about.
> >> 
> >> fgamsdr
> >> IOhannes
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> > 
> > 
> > 
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