I wonder if there's a way to map instance numbers to $0 values in instances. Suppose you had:

[clone -receive foo 16 abstraction 1 2 3]

where 1 2 3 are mapped to $1 $2 $3 inside the instances, respectively.

[clone] makes 16 instances. Then in your abstraction you have [r $0-foo], and [4 <message>(--[s foo] from outside would be received by the [r $0-foo] inside the fourth instance.

The complicated thing here is how to make this work:

[clone -receive $0-foo 16 abstraction 1 2 3]

Since the instances don't know their parent's $0-value, you'd need to modify your abstraction to contain [r $0-$4-foo], and then make [clone -receive $0-foo 16 abstraction 1 2 3 $0]. This is complicated -- probably too complicated -- but the advantage would be that you'd need to make minimal changes to the abstraction. The levels of locality are handled by the user, and it would be much less disruptive to add an extra argument at the end when needed than to get [clone] to try to handle it automatically with the current $1 stuff.

But again, I might be missing something in the design and intended use of the $1 mapping.

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Alex Norman <x37v.alex@gmail.com> wrote:
I see your point, the abstraction need not know it's instance number since only the messages meant for it would be dispatched to it.. If you don't care about using sends directed to a specific abstraction then the $1 does nothing for you and if the flag to clone could ditch the $1 to instance setting and just set the arguments to the abstraction [clone -flag blah 20 1 2 3] makes 20 copies of blah with args $1=1 $2=2.. You could use more of your existing abstractions as is, using their args the same way with or without clone.

I'm warming up to that idea.

Alex

On May 17, 2016 6:44:51 PM PDT, Christof Ressi <christof.ressi@gmx.at> wrote:
you can still disambiguate, because incoming messages are dispatched by the instance number and outgoing messages are prepended with it!

My suggestion was mainly concerning all abstractions that work with inlets and outlets (as opposed to sends and receives), where you basically pass a message and get something out. This could be anything, from simple message filtering to a perlin noise generator. Or also existing audio modules that work with a message inlet. If there was such a flag, you could take any of these abstractions as they are, control them separately by prepending the instance number and route the message output (or use the sum of the audio output).  

I guess, people will use [clone] mainly for voice management for synthesizers, granular synthesis, complicated nested patches etc., but I also see a great potential for massive data generation by using existing simple abstractions and cloning them.

Personally, I have many
abstractions I would like to use with [clone], but either I'd have to rewrite them or make a wrapper abstraction. It's not a big deal, it's just that an alternative forwarding mode would provide some additional convenience (and could also encourage other usages for [clone]). 

Anyway, I can totally live without this feature, but would be happy to have it :-).

 Gesendet: Mittwoch, 18. Mai 2016 um 02:35 Uhr
 Von: "Miller Puckette" <msp@ucsd.edu>
 An: "Christof Ressi" <christof.ressi@gmx.at>
 Cc: Pd-list <pd-list@lists.iem.at>
 Betreff: Re: [PD] [clone]'s instance number

 I'm not sure... would anyone ever use this feature?  The patch in question
 would ahve to take arguments (if not, thre's no problem) but not use them to
 disambiguate the instances (because clone will set them all equal
anyway).
 I have trouble imaginig anyone building a patch like that.
 
 cheers
 Miller
 
 On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 12:54:16AM +0200, Christof Ressi wrote:
 What do you think about the idea with a flag for changing the way creation arguments are forwarded? It would be really handy if you could write something like
 [clone -flag 100 my-abstraction 5 6 7] and $1 $2 $3 will be substituted by 5 6 7 instead of [N] 5 6. This way you could use existing abstractions as they are, without the need for writing a wrapper abstraction to handle the creation argument forwarding.
 
 Christof
 
 Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Mai 2016 um 04:05 Uhr
 Von: "Miller Puckette" <msp@ucsd.edu>
 An: "Jaime
Oliver" <jaime.oliver2@gmail.com>
 Cc: "Christof Ressi" <christof.ressi@gmx.at>, Pd-list <pd-list@lists.iem.at>
 Betreff: Re: [PD] [clone]'s instance number

 Cool, taking this suggestion.  At least for now it will work either way,
 but it's much more readable with the abstraction name first so I changed the
 help file to invoke it that way.
 
 cheers
 Miller
 
 On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 01:13:37PM -0400, Jaime Oliver wrote:
 Well, 
 
 What would happen if instead of calling clone like:
 
 [clone 16 my-abstraction 1 5 9]
 
 we called it with:
 
 [clone my-abstraction 16 1 5 9]
 
 and then $1 seems quite appropriate.
 
 ?
 
 J
 
 
 
 On May 11, 2016, at 12:17 PM, Christof Ressi <christof.ressi@gmx.at> wrote:
 
 I agree that $1 is most natural!
 
 However, what about adding an additional flag -foo for [clone], which changes the way creation arguments are parsed?
 Passing -foo could ignore the object ID and rather forward creation arguments just as they are.
 
 This wouldn't break the current behaviour of [clone], but provide some functionality to deal with ordinary abstractions more conveniently.
 
 Christof
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2016 um 18:06 Uhr
 Von: "Ivica Bukvic" <ico@vt.edu>
 An: "Miller Puckette" <msp@ucsd.edu>
 Cc: "IOhannes m zmoelnig" <zmoelnig@iem.at>, Pd-list <pd-list@lists.iem.at>, "Christof Ressi" <christof.ressi@gmx.at>
 Betreff: Re: [PD] [clone]'s instance number
 What about
having an if statement that detects clone object and if so, compensates for $2 discrepancy and assigns $1 to it instead and increments from there? This way the discrepancy is internalized as opposed to something user needs to deal with.
 -- 
 Ivica Ico Bukvic, D.M.A.
 Associate Professor
 Computer Music
 ICAT Senior Fellow
 Director -- DISIS, L2Ork
 Virginia Tech
 School of Performing Arts – 0141
 Blacksburg, VA 24061
 (540) 231-6139
 ico@vt.edu
 www.performingarts.vt.edu[http://www.performingarts.vt.edu]
 disis.icat.vt.edu[http://disis.icat.vt.edu]
 l2ork.icat.vt.edu[http://l2ork.icat.vt.edu]
 ico.bukvic.net[http://ico.bukvic.net]
 
 On May 11, 2016 11:50, "Miller Puckette" <msp@ucsd.edu[msp@ucsd.edu]> wrote:I gave this some thought but couldn't come up with anything more natural than
 the "$1" idea.  It allows for changing the other arguments more easily than
 it would have been if the instance number were passed last.  Also, somehow
 it felt more natural to have the instance number first.
 
 If there's interest in the idea, I could add arrguments to change the
 behavior (such as putting $1 last instead of first)...  Offhand I doubt that
 would get used much though.
 
 cheers
 Miller
 
 
 
 On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 05:26:21PM +0200, Christof Ressi wrote:
 There's also a pitfall: additional creation arguments for the cloned abstraction will start with
$2.
 For example, in [clone 16 my-abstraction 1 5 9] '1' will be parsed as $2, '5' as $3, '9' as $4 etc.
 No problem, if the abstraction was written for being used with [clone], but bad when cloning existing abstractions.
 
 I'm wondering if there could be a way to get the abstraction ID without messing up existing abstractions... Maybe have a dedicated object?
 
 For now, I think it's important to mention the parsing of additional creation arguments in the help file.
 
 Christof
 
 Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2016 um 16:25 Uhr
 Von: "IOhannes m zmoelnig" <zmoelnig@iem.at[zmoelnig@iem.at]>
 An: pd-list@lists.iem.at[pd-list@lists.iem.at]
 Betreff: Re: [PD] [clone]'s instance number
 
 On 2016-05-11 16:18, Liam Goodacre wrote:
 Would it be possible to access [clone]'s unique instance number from within the patch, a bit like a creation argument? This could be used to achieve differentiation between the abstractions, ie. if the abstraction contains "tabread4~ $-1.array" and the $-1 is replaced with the instance number, then each instance could read a different file. Of course there are other ways of doing this, but it would be neat to do it with clone, and I'm wondering if there's a way.
 
 
 isn't this what $1 is already doing in clone's instances?
 
 
 fgasdmr
 IOhannes
 

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