[PD] [pd] tables as patch storage

[Mathieu Bouchard]

Le 2012-03-27 à 12:50:00, Frank Barknecht a écrit :
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 12:20:51PM +0200, Charles Goyard wrote:
>> Billy Stiltner wrote:
>>> why havent i seen more usage of tables as patch storage?
>> Maybe because you can only store numbers, not strings.
>> A textfile seems more versatile.
> Or a message box. Miller's help-files are crammed full with message 
> boxes used as patch storage. Patch-level storga it nice for toplevel 
> patches, but often not really useful in abstractions, when each 
> abstraction instance needs a different state, although they all share 
> the same patch file.

[textfile] fakes being a filehandle or linked-list in the way it has a 
sequential interface instead of a random-access interface, even though 
it's really stored in RAM as a binbuf.

arrays ([table]) don't have that limitation, but have other limitations. 
This creates unnecessary decisions in Pd, as people have to pick between 
free-form anythings that have to be iterated through, or direct access to 
items that have to be floats, and they can't have both advantages at once.

(Of course, there are externals, but they're not the kind of thing used by 
the kind of people who come up with list-abs.)

  ______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC