[PD] [qlist] and locality

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 04/02/2014 03:08 AM, Roman Haefeli wrote:
> 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.

I think what the OP wants is some minimally-workable notion of scope wrt 
receive-symbols.  Because $0 doesn't deliver this, the next best thing 
is an inconsistent $0 that gets closer to minimally-workable scope.  It 
says something that so many people are willing to overlook the 
inconsistency to get behavior that doesn't cause them to pull their hair 
out.

>
> 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.

Tim Blechmann already addressed scope and implemented a solution in 
Nova.  There are certainly developers in the Pd community who could port 
that idea, or maybe even something better.  But free software devs have 
limited time, and they're smart, so they know if a now prominent 
Supercollider dev can't get such a needed improvement into Pd then they 
probably have 1000 better ways to spend their time.

-Jonathan

> 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
>   
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