From what I understand, Alexandre is looking for
an implementation that is purely signal based (or in other words:
emulates more closely a analog circuit compressor).
Or am I missing something completely?
yup. Not that I'm looking for a way to do it in vanilla, I guess I didn't express myself well. I can even actually think of ways to do it now, but I'm really happy with externals and I'm just really concerned on how is the best and more sophisticated way to implement compressors in Pd. Apparently, my approach is the same as the other examples provided here.