[PD] pd META extension

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 26 19:59:00 CET 2013


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

> From: Roman Haefeli <reduzent at gmail.com>
> To: pd-list at iem.at
> Cc: 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 8:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [PD] pd META extension
> 
> On Mon, 2013-02-25 at 22:10 -0800, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>  Hello list,
>>       I'd like to extend the syntax of the xlet metadata in the [pd 
> META] subpatch.
>> 
>> 
>>  Currently something like [clip] has this for the inlets:
>> 
>>  INLET_0 float list
>>  INLET_1 float
>>  INLET_2 float
>> 
>>  That gets picked up by the autotips which display the methods in the 
> tooltip.
>> 
>>  However, for objects that have multiple xlets like [clip], an xlet tip 
> would be more
>>  helpful if it included a one or two word description of what the inlet is 
> for.  So
>>  when the user hovers over the middle inlet the tip can also say something 
> like:
>>  Inlet 1 of clip (low value): float
>> 
>>  and for the right inlet:
>>  Inlet 2 of clip (high value): float
>> 
>>  I just need some clear syntax for separating the inlet description from the 
> methods.
>> 
>>  Idea #0: semicolon
>>  Example:
>> 
>>  INLET_1 float;
>>  low value
>>  Nice because there is no chance of ambiguity, since the semi can't be 
> part of a method
>>  name.  Unfortunately it forces a newline.
>> 
>>  The semicolon + description part would be optional so there's no need 
> to change any
>>  of the current docs.  Plus it's easy to parse.
> 
> What I like about the META format is it is also easy to parse with Pd
> itself. Thus, I was concerned if your proposed addition would break
> that. I figured it does not. I don't see any other troubles, but see the
> benefit of having a separator. Please go ahead.

Currently the parsing is extremely
simple since it's just a capitalized word followed by atoms and a terminating
semicolon (plus filtering out newlines but that's easy).  The proposed
extension still fits that, except that atoms mean something different depending
on which side of a semicolon atom (i.e., a backslashed semicolon) they
happen to be.  Not to mention the fact that the spaces around the semicolon
atom look different depending on whether you're looking at a patch or the
patch source as you show below.

I could keep the trivial syntax by adding a new tag:

INLET_1_DESC low value
INLET_2_DESC high value

The tag is a little long but it's much easier to parse.  For people making
abstractions where they want to control tooltip text this is what they
want, so it will keep people from mixing methods with free text.

-Jonathan

> 
> Roman
> 
> P.S.: While testing "Pd parsability", I created an object [sel ;] 
> which
> immediately collapsed to [sel;] on instantiation. Although it looks
> weird, it's still functional. It seems something in Pd removes spaces
> around ';'. (Also try creating a [sel ; sel])
> 
> 
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