On Feb 4, 2006, at 4:25 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006, Frank Barknecht wrote:
That's a tricky question: What would a user of these abstractions
expect [*_argument] to output if s/he creates an abstraction with the
argument [myabs foo]? Should "foo" be a "foo" or a "symbol foo"? Both cases are quite usual, but they look the same from the argument handling.Pd's pseudoobjects include floatatom (Ctrl+3) and symbolatom (Ctrl+4). Note that both of those are named with "atom" in the name. Those names
are part of the Pd file format. The symbolatom boxes output "symbol foo"
and not "foo", because they output something that can be auto-converted to
a 1-element list.For consistency I would say: If the user wants "foo" but not "symbol foo" s/he shouold take care of that manually with [list trim].
I agree.
This gets into another definition question. What is the type in this message: [word(
It's a symbol. Oh, no, wait, it's not, "symbol word" would be a symbol, or rather, a symbol-symbol. [word( then would be a non-symbol-symbol. ;)
There are "atom messages" which is any message that has the "list" selector and one argument, or anything that can be cast to/from it.
This includes messages with "float" "symbol" "pointer" selectors.There are "listlike messages" which may be any message that has the
"list" selector or can be cast to/from it. This includes atom messages and the bang message.The rest may be called "nonlistlike messages" and everything together
may be called "messages".Your "non-symbol-symbol" could be called "nonlistlike messages without arguments" (or "messages without arguments" in order to include bang),
but it wouldn't have that Alice-in-Wonderland sound that
"non-symbol-symbol" has.
I outlined these categories because each one has distinct behavior, so
each one should have a distinct name:
bang float symbol pointer undefined element list undefined list
Data types are different than messages. Anyone of these categories can
be a message, and they can stand alone without being a message, like in
a symbolatom or floatatom. When you have something stored in a
[symbol], [float], [any], etc. then its not a message, but just data.
So I don't think we should definite data types in terms of messages.
The terms that you come up with work as general categories, but they do
not help in defining the very specific types I listed above, as data
types, not as messages. (FYI: Miller uses the terms "out-of-band
messages" and "metamessages" in list-help.pd).
That still leaves "undefined element" and "undefined list" as, um,
undefined...
.hc
There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
-A.J. Muste