[PD] [qlist] and locality

[Roman Haefeli]

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 17:20 -0300, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> > you might want to see the messages sent by [qlist]
> > the same as messages in msgboxes,
> > where you don't have $0-expansion either
> 
> 
> Bummer. anyway, this brings me to a different topic then. Why is there
> this lack of expansion in messages?

Message boxes _do_ expand dollar arguments.

> I think I've raised this issue sometime ago. Sorry I don't remember
> what the problem was, but I'd like to ask again if it's really really
> hard to expand the functionality in messages, or if this could happen
> sometime soon in Pd.

The difference is that dollar arguments in message boxes expand to the
incoming message while dollar arguments in object boxes expand to the
arguments given to the parent. $0 in object boxes is actually an
argument given implicitly by Pd to the parent (every instance of a Pd
file gets a separate one). 
 
> I believe there won't be any compatibility issues by expanding this
> functionality. Old patches will still work and newer patches could be
> simpler, right?

You're asking for inconsistency: You propose to have a mixture of dollar
arguments in message boxes, namely you want $0 to expand to an argument
of the parent and all other dollar arguments expand according to the
incoming message.

While I also don't see how your proposal would break compatibility, I
think what I said above is the reasoning why things are how they are.
While I don't have a strong opinion on the subject matter, I suspect it
is not going to be changed soon (it was brought up a few times already,
iirc).


Roman