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

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at at.or.at
Sun Jan 15 23:34:20 CET 2012


On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:59 AM, 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 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...

Fixing <<Loaded>> is probably a bigger thing than I can manage for the Pd-extended 0.43 release, but patches are welcome.  So the question of the moment is: are the tooltips usable enough to leave them in? Do they cause any problems? 

.hc


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