[PD] How's Pd limited?

[Billy Stiltner]

My struggles with it are not really limitations of pd.
It's the way I have went about modelling a polyphonic synthesizer and using
the tcl controls as MVC then making the controls a part of the preset
machine.
Everything is available  for me to break the view away from the DSP its
just
that there are some pretty nifty things going on with the view.
For instance there are toggles that change the range of the envelope ADR
controls
so you can have 1s,3s, 10s, and 30s controls. This is dynamic controls.
Another is a dial or knob that is quantized and the range changes depending
on
the number of intervals the scale has per equivalence interval or what I
like to call the xTave
, it is used to offset the frequency in a quantitative
way in steps of the scale. It doesn't matter if the intervals are specified
in cents ,JI,or an edo.
The scales all end up in an frequency ratio list. So the knob is used to
like the "tune" or "pitch"
knob yet instead of continuous or cents adjustment it allows an offset
based on the scale.
There are 2 banks of oscillators and only one uses this kind of control,
the other is just a regular dial
that offsets by a floating point. At this point of development it was found
that there were way too many
controls and  being attached to the presets as well as the synthesizer's
realtime adjustments.
So Instead of making more controls I tried to reduce the amount of controls
by changing the send
and receive names dynamically. I guess it works for controls that are not
dynamic but gets really
complicated for the controls that have their properties change at runtime.
Here is a thread about it.
http://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/5724/dollar-signs-in-objects-and-messages
Also some discussion in this list.
That can be solved once the controls are broke free from the presets and
DSP.
Making everything FUDI friendly with super neat message boxes and routing
of messages through the first inlet like that can be seen in Miller's multi
pickup guitar effects monster and
patch repository or MAX/MSP XFM~  will be quite the task. Those are great
examples of how patching should be.
Branching away from puredata?
Using javascript and the web browser dynamic html to make controls for the
fractal sequencer.
As well as a xenharmonic sequencer, a Moments of Symmetry(Erv Wilson)
matrix generator
to go along with Erv's mosedo.pdf There are 2 versions of it , one without
the FUDI to pd stuff
https://ia601408.us.archive.org/1/items/mosedo.html/mosedo.html?p=17&g=7 ,
the other with and another expected soon
that works with  any generator. The edo MOS are finite and are the "Well
Formed" set of MOS,
Finally Andrew Milne figured out how to calculate the cardinalities without
using continued fractions  or brute force.
So now it is quick to generate the non rational MOS alongside the closest
approximating "Well Formed" MOS using very
simple code which took forever to even comprehend on paper with pencil.
Things like this are complex for me with pd
Now that the algorithm is coded up in javascript a pd version would be
simpler to make however , having this part of
the puzzle in the browser will make it easier for a general audience to
use.
The new text object makes things like a database of modes easy to access in
pd and also is easy enough
to implement a user interface with the entire list on a webpage.  In pd a
simple abstraction that increments
an index for sets with {p} tones    , an index for the modes of  sizes {s}
, then the index into the modes {m} with
s number of notes within  scales having p tones. Example:
from
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/modename.html
14 tone equal modes: *2 3 2 2 3 2*                    Quasi-equal Hexatonic
*2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1*      Gould Nonatonic
*1 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 1*  Decimal-10
*2 3 3 3 3*                        Godzilla-5
*2 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1*      Godzilla-9
*3 2 2 3 2 2*                    Hedgehog-6
*1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2*           Hedgehog-8
*3 3 2 3 3*                         Semaphore-5
*1 2 3 2 1 2 3*                Superpelog-Pelog
*1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2*        Superpelog-9

p=14,
s=6,
m=0*: 2 3 2 2 3 2*                    Quasi-equal Hexatonic
m=1*: 3 2 2 3 2 2*                    Hedgehog-6

For this set it is not too much to cycle through the entire list
but for  12 and 31 edo there are many more modes.
Would probably be ok to only divide the entire list up in files with
the all the modes in scales with p tones instead of splitting up the list
further.

The list was easy to add user interactive <div> tags and mouseover functions
that send the selected mode to the synthesizer in javascript and html.

With the text object the user interface is a little different.
It's only a float atom index  into the list,  a canvas display for the
currently selected
item in the list. , and a bang to send the mode off to where it can be
used  vs the entire
interactive scrollable list in the browser.  Some of the modes are specific
to other scales
that are Just Intonation as well as cents  rather than equal division
scales.
So from within pd there are abstractions that accept over FUDI a scale in
cents as well
as a scale in Just intonation.  simply snagging the intervals from the html
and inserting them
into the section heading onmouseover function input is all that is needed
for FUDICalization
implementation.  With the textobject the scale intervals are easily
snaggable with [text get].
For the equal division  scales an abstraction exists that only needs a
message containing
an equivalence interval or "xTave" and number of divisions. for Bohlen
Pierce - xTave = 3
3 and divisions = 13.  The text object could contain the entire message on
one line
EqualDivision 13 3;
and the text that describes it "Bohlen Pierce Equal Divisions" on another
line.
This is getting simpler now, I think it's a good format for data of this
type which
can describe in different ways , information for the user and the machine.
for the modes  , since they are all modes and described in the same way
the "mode part of the message neednt be in the text object.
Since all the data has a descriptor and information
the index could simply be the entire list  in 2 line pairs.
description;
data;
description;
data;

< >
next / previous item is easy

for(x=0, x<2,x++)
|
[t f  f]
{float to spigot selects , then float to text get}

[text get]
 {out to spigot inlets}                        [select 0]
                                              [spigot]
                                              [canvasrx label description(
[canvas[o][<][>]]redtangled

                                    [select 1]
                      [ spigot ]
[r bang(      /
 |               /
  |           /
   [list]


What about dynamic visualization of data that is variable in size as well
as
variable element controls like a piano roll midi sequencer?

it's being implemented in tcl.

how do you do it without tcl and without data structures?
Food for thought!

Is pure data's entire reason for existence to perplexingly confuse  the
virtual parallel patchcordianist?

The webpage interface: xensynth/burningship/pdApplet/xensynthcontrol.html
https://archive.org/details/Xensynth10.01


What in the Godel Bear does this mean?
"Loading the file versus loading the object

There are multiple forms for storing objects on the filesystem, including
abstractions, single- and multi-object library files, etc. Then there is
the representation of what objects are assigned to which symbols. These
don't need to be the same thing. Each patch has its own table of which
symbols are attached to which objects, and this can be separate from which
objects are actually loaded into memory.

One idea for handling this is to have separate tables of symbols for which
object files are loaded, versus which symbols are tied to which objects for
a given patch. It seems for this to be workable, there would need to be a
"loaded" table, then each patch would generate its table from the loaded
table. Then if an object isn't in the loaded table, the loaded table
handler would go and try to load it."

https://puredata.info/dev/PdNamespaces
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