Alright thanks to everyone for the help. I think i will get a clear idea of how the semantics go when i get a chance to look at the game of life for gridflow and framestein, BUT i'm running on windows here and i need a .dll of gridflow in order to check it out (unless im mistaken about how it's implemented) and i can't seem to find the patch in the framestein example section or on the web.
One other thing, since i've been playing with the "obj" msg function to make the patch generate sub patches for me, i've noticed that it's possible to basically make drawings in a window with object box's, or whatever. I think it would be *really* *really* handy if someone could program a quick mod for PD that would place a "pixel" feature in the "Put" menu. That way one could draw with obj messages. It would be 100% effective if you could set the RGB as well. I like the idea of things like GEM/framstein/xgui but this seems like a good option for someone that just wants to keep things as simple as possible, and learn by doing absolutly everything themselves from scratch, right? maybe there is a downfall to this possible method, let me know.
walter carpenter