How about a list of things that are special, and could be put into pd to
make it more special?
- "Find" should work with symbol-text strings. Pd has the great feature of
naming local variables with $0-xxx. But if I'm looking for all objects
with $0-xx, or all ocurrences of $4 in a patch, that won't work with
"find". Also using the specific-assigned number (e.g. 1024-xxx instead of
$0-xxx) won't do the trick.
- "Find" doesn't work with partial strings. If I'm looking for all
ocurrences of INIT (which might be in several objects like sends,
receives, table~, etc.), it only looks for complete objects. I would have
to look for "s INIT", "r INIT", etc. etc.
- all objects based on "invisible cords" (sends- and receive-based
objects) could have a shortcut to its counterparts like in max. I
personally avoid these kinds of objects as much as possible, but in some
situations they are the only viable sollution.
- Comments with line breaks. It's funny how people get used to some
strange restrictions, when they're probably easy (?) to solve. What sense
is it in making 5 diferent text strings for a list with 5 items, that is
anyway supposed to look like one object?
- auto-setting size for objects? if you have a gate object with more than
4 outputs (or any other object), you'll need to make some garbage text or
something in order to work with it. since it is quite logical that when
the user needs outputs they should be acessible, an elegant solution would
be to assign a minimal value to the gap between outputs. if the standard
space of the object isn't big enough, the object will make itself bigger
automatically.
Although the stretching possibility in max is quite useful as well.
is there a place in the wiki or something to put suggestions like these?
after all the complaining, here is a list of features that are special to pd.
- open source: you can always dig into the deep universe of code to see
how things are done. and change things according to your needs
- no licencing: that means you don't pay money to be allowed to program
in pd. (the player is free also in max). but it also means that you don't have to fiddle around with the licence when you install (which usually takes a day) or that you licence can expire or that you will have to redo this when you buy new hardware.
- no messing around with floats and ints. no mistakes because you forget
a dot (for example in [/ 10.]) that also includes that you can create arithmetic operators without arguments. whereas in max the default is integer. which means you cannot just type [/].
- possibility to edit abstractions! in max you always have to open the
abstraction itself which is more than annoying.
- possibility to save your patch with an open subpatch window in the
front. (max thinks, you want to save the subpatch as a seperate new patch...)
- no list object (ok, there is [zl reg])
- no [t a b]
- as far as I know no settable sliders. (slider 200 will have a fixed
size and a fixed scale (0-199 - linear) (might be wrong with that).
- no keyboard shortcuts to create objects/messages (ctl+1...). there is
a max toolbox, but that does not work reliable. unpack does not work for symbols in max. (but I am sure you can do that somehow else) diffs: two things that are different in max: [trigger 5 b] takes 5 as a number and not as a selector. when you bang it, even when you feed in another int, it will still output 5 and not zero as in pd. messages also remember their last value that you sent through them, so if you bang a message [$1 $2( it will spit out the last values and not 0 0. (only at the beginning as default)
- max does not run on linux
...
m.
PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list