On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Krzysztof Czaja wrote:
What I have in mind, is that during object creation, when the requested class is not known, and there is no matching abstraction, a `failsafe' replacement object is used. Currently in Pd, it has never any inlets nor outlets, even if loaded from a patch with the original object connected. (A slightly different case, and apparently easier to deal with, is an already patched up object, edited into a ``couldn't create'' nop by the user.)
Currently in Max, such creatures, called `bogus' objects, do preserve connections.
This is also a feature of jMax, which draws such objects in lightgray instead of white. That this feature is not present is a bit of an annoyance. It makes it not very much possible to look at a patch just for looking at it, without having the external.
This would be important to look at example patches for an external that is not installed yet, as a preview of what the external would be used and such. Well I don't know if many people do that, but sometimes I happen to.
Another possibly more important problem is when you change an object at runtime and make a mistake and then the object loses all its inlets/outlets and all associated connections (!). At least now there's Ctrl+Z that makes it less of a problem.
________________________________________________________________ Mathieu Bouchard http://artengine.ca/matju