You have this problem with the generated objects as well - as they, too, need to be built out of messages. That is, if you provide a symbol box to let users type in the name, they cannot type $0 or $1, instead they need to type in the values of $0 or $1.
Actually it worked until now, when someone the receive or send of the
canvas changes it becomes what is typed (although the $ looks like $ in
the symbol atom).
Only with the label it doesn't work, was that what you meant? yeah, for
that I guess there's no solution.
Besides that, there are some new methods of messages in 0.39 like "adddollar 1" or "adddollsym 2-aa, which can be handy. See the help file for messages, subpatch "pd changing-messages" for details on this.
yes, I just saw it. But a good point would be to be able to edit patches
that could write the symbols "in the original form" in the guiobjs. the
best way would be to just type "$1-aa" in the receive name, and get it.
but it is already what's happening, at least with send and receive fields.
just saw the new message methods, but it's not easy (or not trivial) to
implement that in a typing context.