[PD] [file]: paths not relative to patch

[Christof Ressi]

>> use the current working directory?
>>
>> Ah, now I understand your question. But I don't think it is a valid
>> question. I see no point in using what currently is the working
>> directory of Pd. Depending on how Pd is started, it uses a different
>> working directory without the user necessarily intending to do so.

There are certainly scenarios where this is exactly what you want, e.g. 
when Pd is used as command line utily (I have personally written such 
utilities). If I pass a relative path to such an utility, I want it to 
resolve to the current working directy and *not* to the Pd patch itself.

> Thus, all file writing objects are written so that
> they write relative to the patch. That's an already established
> pattern. I don't see why you are arguing against it.
I acknowledge that it's an established pattern. Actually, [file] could have added an object [file cwd] to get the currenty
working directy if someone needs it and use the Pd patch location as the default.

On the other hand, I understand that [file] wants to be a low-level filesystem API and not apply any magic. It's really design decision.

> I'm asking you back: What do you do if you want to write relative to
> Pd's start location with [text], [textfile], [table], [soundfiler],
> [array]? You currently cannot do that and apparently this is no
> problem, otherwise people would have requested it.

Yes, this is a limitation. And actually an argument for a [file cwd] object.

>> How is the current working directory not a sane directy?
> See above. It's just not useful for anything.
See above. It is.
>>> even Pd does it somewhat clumsily, I'll stick to the clumsy
>>> solution
>>> (checking for / and :).
>> That's what I was going to recommend.
>   
> It's clumsy and wrong. It'll detect my  sub-directory named 'C:' as an
> absolute path while I was intending it as a relative path.
>
Ah yes, on the patch level you don't know if you're on Windows. On 
Windows, ':' is a reserved character and can only appear as part of a 
drive letter.