On Tue, 31 Mar 2009, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
I think the two ranges for this discussion separate signals versus controls. A sawtooth~ is a signal that is meant to be listened to, so it would good from -1 to 1. A phasor~ is the exact same shape as a sawtooth~, but it is meant to be a control, so it is 0 to 1. You could easily switch the two with some basic math, but most of the time, you'll want your controls to be 0 to 1 and your signals -1 to 1. A similar pair would be square~ (signal) and pwm~ (control).
Those words could be chosen differently. In Pd, signal means both of those things, as it's a single type of wire and a single type of data; and about control... I used to often see the phrase "control object" to mean "message-system object"... but I don't recall whether that was in Pd or in jMax. In any case I think it would be better to say that the 0-to-1 signal is intended as a "multiplicator" or "envelope" whereas the -1-to-1 signal is intended as a... non-multiplicator... or non-envelope... you may have better ideas for names.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec