[PD] Help Patches Layout

Ivica Ico Bukvic ico at vt.edu
Thu Mar 17 17:26:07 CET 2016


Here's my $0-cents worth. This is an eternal struggle in the 
world'o'comp sci. We need to wrap our heads around the fact that 0 is 
the 1st number in any kind of data container, whether it be value or 
ordinal position. Yet, as humans we prefer 1 to be that first number, 
reserving 0 as the special case value. So, you could make the case 
either way arguing for consistency, intuitiveness, aliens, whatever. 
Another consideration within the pd* ecosystem is that it is 0-centric, 
meaning things tend to start with $0 (patch instance) before they get to 
$1. Then again, $1 refers to the first arg, so you could argue it may be 
inconsistent... etc. etc. etc.

On the practical side, renaming inlets would mean going through every 
last help file and ensuring it has been updated accordingly, otherwise 
you would be just adding to more confusion as newcomers learn that some 
help files refer to the first inlet as 0 and others as 1...

On 3/17/2016 11:49 AM, Esteban Viveros wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm with Porres in Cyclone maintenance working on revision of some 
> Help patches.
>
> The question is: Why count inlets and outlets from zero if Pd user 
> have to call inlets and outlets from $1 $2 $3... ? For help patch user 
> don't be more convenient enumerate inlets and outlets starting at 
> number 1?
>
> Cheers
>
>
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