On Nov 1, 2005, at 1:34 PM, Tim Blechmann wrote:
This has been discussed ad nauseum. Here's two reasons: 1) look at how many people post to the list with questions about loading libs, how many people post with problems loading single file externals?
there are different ways to handle this ... e.g. a proper #include, import, site-lisp, site-packages, site_perl (i know, this would require changes to the language pd)
ever had trouble with namespace conflicts? Try solving that when you are using libs. Sometimes its not possible.
if i have a zexy.pd_linux and a cyclone.pd_linux, i know, which sources i have, if i have a "prepend.pd_linux" and a "prepend.pd_linux" i have no idea, which prepend i have. splitting libs to externals doesn't really help to solve this problem, it just changes the responsibility from the developer to the user. but it's not helping anything!
Actually, splitting libs into externals and using the geiger namespace DOES solve this problem. You can individually select the object that you want but using [cyclone/prepend], [iemlib/prepend], etc. Yes, there are problems with this, like you won't get the right help file unless we change the C code, but its much better than the old problems with libs.
This is something that has been on my TODO list for a long while, maybe I'll do this for the upcoming multi-platform release.
i think, the only way to solve the name clashes is _communication_ and the ambition to resolve them. but that's a community issue.
Communication is good on the small scale, but as the developer community grows, then it becomes a waste of time because all the chatter on the list will be about this topic. The real solution is a proper namespace, like Java has with its imports, and this can be done using the geiger namespace and a [declare] object and some other minor things.
.hc
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