[PD] how to tidy up patches ?

[Jonathan Wilkes]

----- Original Message -----

> From: IOhannes m zmoelnig <zmoelnig at iem.at>
> To: pd-list at iem.at
> Cc: 
> Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 3:23 AM
> Subject: Re: [PD] how to tidy up patches ?
> 
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> On 2012-01-12 04:51, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> 
>>  how the windowing system renders them.  So a patch on one system can look 
>>  "tidy", while different fonts (or different rendering of the same 
> font) can introduce 
> 
> this of course depends on your definition of "tidiness".
> e.g. i wouldn't say that C++ code is more tidy/readable if the text was
> neatly "justified" (as opposed to the usual 
> "left-aligned"ness).

There is absolutely no possibility of the text of one line of C++ overlapping with 
the text of another line.  This is a qualitatively different issue than font differences 
in Pd creating ambiguities in a patch that weren't there on the author's monitor.

> 
> nevertheless, in my conception of "tidyness", Pd alignment is also 
> more
> important than in text-based languages.

I'd say that with greater freedom of placement comes greater responsibility.  Unfortunately 
Pd in its current implementation doesn't make cross-platform patch clarity possible without 
a burdensome amount of work (basically looking at the patch ahead of time on as many 
platforms as possible).

> i just want to propose that if the readability of your patche depends on
> the alignedness of the 3rd outlet, you probably should break it down
> even more into idioms that are readable "at a glance".

Imagine a [clip 111 555] object with a diagonal wire to the right of it that connects to and 
from some other objects.  That is readable/tidy by any standard.  But how does one 
know whether the available fonts on another system will make [clip 1 5] so wide that 
its 3rd outlet overlaps the diagonal line, thus creating an ambiguity?

> 
> fgmasdr
> IOhannes
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