[PD] suggestion: $0 in messages

Alexandre Torres Porres porres at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 23:29:47 CEST 2018


2018-04-02 16:02 GMT-03:00 Miller Puckette <msp at ucsd.edu>:

> Well, I've been trying to stay out of this, but here's a thing... someone
> could implement a "msg" object that you could invoke like
> [msg 1 $0 3] to get a message with a 'true' $0 built into it.  This would
> also work for $1, etc, so would be much smarter than changing the message
> box semantics.
>
> But then the question is, how would you allow message-box-style $
> substitutions?
> OK, we can do this:
>
> [msg $1 #1]
>
> which would be the exact reverse of Max's #1 convention - #1 could be the
> message-box $1.


> I've shrunk from actually doing this, not just because it makes my teeth
> hurt,
> but also because... shouldn't this be expanded into a full-on scripting
> language?  And what then would be its relationship with the expr family?
> It quickly got too deep for me to figure out what would be a good,
> canonical
> solution.
>

Well... if the idea was to expand Pd's message syntax, why not add #0, #1,
etc... as a way to expand creation arguments in messages? It wouldn't be in
reverse to Max (if that's any positive)... sure, there are backwards
compatibility concerns, but it feels it was a good thing to have.

But yeah, since IOhannes' "no" and me accepting the fact the current
behaviour remains so as the result of a conscious decision, I've started
working on an external, and much inspired by max's message box. But not
being a max user, I did know about "#1" there.

Anyway, by getting my hands dirty on it, I realized how "$1" would
naturally expand to arguments, and hardly would expand to message's input
(maybe possible with some ninja tricks, but maybe not even possible). Then
I thought both ways could useful in a message, so it became this deal not
only about "$0" anymore... and also the fact that, Ideally, there would be
two different prefixes for message expansion and creation argument
expansion.

So I was looking for a syntax to refer to message inputs as well. By
considering the [expr] way of doing such a thing (with "$f#" and stuff), I
thought a generic "$a#" ("a" for "atom", symbol or float). Though I kinda
like the "#1" idea now that you mention it, haha, even though if reversed
if compared to max... but yeah, something like "$a1" looks more "PD-ish",
right?

In any case, I welcome any kind of feedback!

cheers


>
> cheers
> Miller
>
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 08:55:58PM +0200, Roman Haefeli wrote:
> > yawn.....
> >
> >
> > On Son, 2018-04-01 at 17:42 -0300, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> > > Hi, currently, if you want to use $0, you need an object cause it
> > > becomes "0" when it's inside messages.
> > >
> > > Pd-l2ork and Purr Data implemented a way that $0 works in the same
> > > way as in objects than in messages, and I think it is a great
> > > feature, as many patches can be significantly simplified. I guess
> > > most Pd users here know what I'm talking about.
> >
> > By implementing that, you would once forever prohibit the proper way to
> > expand $0 which is expanding to the selector of the message. That's why
> > I oppose your proposition. (Actually, it doesn't matter whether I'm
> > opposing it or not since I don't contribute any Pd code. But I can at
> > least point to the fallacies.)
> >
> > I absolutely see the convenience of your proposition, but there would
> > be no good explanation for it. Consider it a bad coincidence that both
> > kinds of variables use a dollar prefix, there is nothing in common
> > between them (expanding to creation arguments versus expanding to atoms
> > of messages). Personally, I would totally find it convenient if Pi was
> > an integer number, it would make so many things so much easier.
> >
> > Roman
>
>
>
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