[PD] Tooltips in Pd-extended 0.43 WAS: no pd?? WTF ????

[Jonathan Wilkes]

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

> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: Max <abonnements at revolwear.com>; pd list <pd-list at iem.at>; Ben Baker-Smith <bbakersmith at gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:20 PM
> Subject: Re: Tooltips in Pd-extended 0.43 WAS: no pd?? WTF ????
> 
> 
> On Jan 12, 2012, at 10:08 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> 
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>> 
>>>  From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
>>>  To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
>>>  Cc: Max <abonnements at revolwear.com>; pd list 
> <pd-list at iem.at>; Ben Baker-Smith <bbakersmith at gmail.com>
>>>  Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:50 PM
>>>  Subject: Tooltips in Pd-extended 0.43 WAS: no pd?? WTF ????
>>> 
>>> 
>>>  On Jan 12, 2012, at 6:56 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>> 
>>>>  ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>  From: Max <abonnements at revolwear.com>
>>>>>  To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
>>>>>  Cc: Richie Cyngler <glitchpop at gmail.com>; pd list 
>>>  <pd-list at iem.at>; Ben Baker-Smith <bbakersmith at gmail.com>
>>>>>  Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:09 AM
>>>>>  Subject: Re: [PD] no pd?? WTF ????
>>>>> 
>>>>>  And that's not the end of the vicious cycle.
>>>>>  Students who saved their money to buy a Max license are often 
> unwilling 
>>>  to 
>>>>>  accept that their work could have been done as easy in Pd, and 
>>>  sometimes even 
>>>>>  better and/or easier.
>>>> 
>>>>  If you think of free 
>>>>  software as an ethical issue like I do and are talking about free 
> programs 
>>>  that have a 
>>>>  proprietary alternative, there is still an important division 
> between those 
>>>  programs that are 
>>>>  free and superior to their proprietary counterparts on practical 
> grounds, 
>>>  and those that 
>>>>  don't have the same feature set as their proprietary 
> counterparts (but 
>>>  are still quite good).
>>>> 
>>>>  In terms of ease of patching, Pd is clearly in the latter camp-- 
> Max has 
>>>  infinite undo, a 
>>>>  "Tidy Up" that actually _does_ something useful, and a 
> set of 
>>>  externals that allows to make 
>>>>  multiple connections at once and lots of other shortcuts (maybe 
> these are 
>>>  part of the core now, 
>>>>  I'm not sure).  Plus tooltips, anchors to resize 
> guis/boxes/messages, 
>>>  and probably lots of 
>>>>  other things that make patching easier.
>>>> 
>>>>  I use Pd and free software (almost) exclusively, but we should be 
> clear 
>>>  about which features 
>>>>  are available and which are not.
>>> 
>>>  Excellent point.
>>> 
>>>  Speaking of, is your tooltips patch fully functional in Pd-extended 
> 0.43?  I 
>>>  believe it is included, right?  It would be great to ship with that 
> working.
>> 
>>  There was the problem that if you did [loadbang]-[tip 1 blah blah blah(-[s 
> pd-this-canvas.pd] 
>>  the label doesn't get the right width.  I tried using the 
> <<Loaded>> virtual event and it didn't 
>>  work, and then I think you said that the patch should be finished drawing 
> before <<Loaded>> 
>>  happens.
>> 
>>  I could just use after idle or update idletasks but those are heavily 
> critiqued on the tcl wiki...
> 
> 'update' is bad news, but 'after idle' is fine.  It just might 
> lead to tricky bugs since things will not necessarily execute in the order you 
> might think.

The "tricky bugs" warning was what made me not want to use 'after idle'.  I think 
in another thread you agreed that <<Loaded>> should get triggered after the 
patch is drawn, so a quick and dirty solution would put 'after idle' right before 
the <<Loaded>> virtual event in the relevant proc (with a comment that this isn't 
the best solution).  If that sounds like a bad idea, then the tooltips patch shouldn't 
be included until <<Loaded>> works correctly.

Unless there's another solution I'm not thinking of...

-Jonathan

> 
> .hc
> 
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