[PD] RE : Re: Pd Development "Reverse Kickstarter"

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 05/14/2013 06:27 AM, Roman Haefeli wrote:
> On Die, 2013-05-14 at 12:08 +0100, colet.patrice wrote:
>> None of the softwares I know of have old versions able to open files
>> made with newer versions, even pd dont do this...
> True. However, if you modify a patch without using new objects or any
> new features of the new version, you will still be able to use that
> patch in old versions of Pd. I think that is a pretty valuable property
> of Pd.
>
> Roman

If we take my revision of "Put" menu arrays to add jump-on-click and
bar graphs:

1) For the changes I made to [plot] it should be compatible in both 
directions.
That is, if someone opens an old patch with a data-structure array in 
revised
Pd, makes some changes, then saves it and opens it on old Pd, the old [plot]
code should ignore the extra symbol arguments used to specify the color.
2) For changes I made to arrays, if you edit and save in revised Pd then 
open
in old Pd it will probably break.  This is because I changed graph_array 
to take
an A_GIMME, and the old graph_array specifies particular float and 
symbol args.

For number 2, there isn't a good alternative.  There's only one flag in 
the args
for the "array" message-- while I can save the jump-on-click flag there, 
I cannot
save an symbolic color name there, too.

Canvas args are A_GIMME, so I suppose I could append a list of symbolic 
colors
for the arrays there in a backwards compatible way.

-Jonathan