[PD] should 'flags' always come first?

[Alexandre Torres Porres]

I didn't mean to define things in a broader sense outside the context of
Pd. I'm just concerned in defining what is the "official" settings and
behaviour of flags in Pd.

Em dom., 27 de fev. de 2022 às 06:33, IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at>
escreveu:

> that's typically not how it works. see Postel's law.
>

I see. It's not actually a bug if you allow non-conformant input, as long
as the meaning is clear. But the point here is to define what is the
correct way, in order to document it as such.

Lots of people use a bogus symbol argument for inlet (such as [inlet hz])
and Pd allows it, even though it is meaningless and non-conformant input,
but the point is that it is not documented and it shouldn't be. In the same
way you can have [osc~ 440 hz(cycles-per-second)] and [osc~] will not
complain that it is meaningless and that's fine.

But this is a bit different, it's something that is meaningful and that
will work.

Therefore, my main concern here is to agree on what is the standard way and
document it. And I believe the idea is that flags in pd are supposed to
come first for optional settings, and I should not say that you can have it
come later in [sigmund~], even though it works.

I'm also concerned to conform to this principles in my externals.

Would it be weird or wrong to have an external that NEEDS to load flags
AFTER the creation arguments? This has been necessary for parameters that
take a non fixed number of elements.



> Pd has mostly adopted single-dash flags, both for cmdline args and for
> arguments.
>

I think Pd has "only" adopted single-dash flags, right? Unless you mean
externals out there have adopted things differently.


> that doesn't mean that other suffixes (e.g. '@') are "bugs". they are
> just uncommon.
>

cyclone uses "@", but that's because MAX uses it (and calls it
"attributes"). They can come later, though.



> - They're always optional
>
> i don't think so.
>

I meant in Pd, but I remember now how [declare] works, and it only takes
'flags', so yeah, not really "optional".



> - They come before "actual" arguments.
>
> what do you mean by "actual arguments"?
>

Arguments that are not flags, in [sigmund~] they'd be "pitch" and "env" for
instance.


> I've never heard of anything like that. i guess you mean arguments that
> are not "flags" (named arguments), but what is typically called
> "positional arguments" (as their semantic is encoded in the position:
> the 1st argument means something else as the 2nd arg).
>

yup
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