2018-04-02 16:02 GMT-03:00 Miller Puckette <msp@ucsd.edu>:
Well, I've been trying to stay out of this, but here's a thing... someone
could implement a "msg" object that you could invoke like
[msg 1 $0 3] to get a message with a 'true' $0 built into it.  This would
also work for $1, etc, so would be much smarter than changing the message
box semantics.

But then the question is, how would you allow message-box-style $ substitutions?
OK, we can do this:

[msg $1 #1]

which would be the exact reverse of Max's #1 convention - #1 could be the
message-box $1. 

I've shrunk from actually doing this, not just because it makes my teeth hurt,
but also because... shouldn't this be expanded into a full-on scripting
language?  And what then would be its relationship with the expr family?
It quickly got too deep for me to figure out what would be a good, canonical
solution.

Well... if the idea was to expand Pd's message syntax, why not add #0, #1, etc... as a way to expand creation arguments in messages? It wouldn't be in reverse to Max (if that's any positive)... sure, there are backwards compatibility concerns, but it feels it was a good thing to have. 

But yeah, since IOhannes' "no" and me accepting the fact the current behaviour remains so as the result of a conscious decision, I've started working on an external, and much inspired by max's message box. But not being a max user, I did know about "#1" there.

Anyway, by getting my hands dirty on it, I realized how "$1" would naturally expand to arguments, and hardly would expand to message's input (maybe possible with some ninja tricks, but maybe not even possible). Then I thought both ways could useful in a message, so it became this deal not only about "$0" anymore... and also the fact that, Ideally, there would be two different prefixes for message expansion and creation argument expansion.

So I was looking for a syntax to refer to message inputs as well. By considering the [expr] way of doing such a thing (with "$f#" and stuff), I thought a generic "$a#" ("a" for "atom", symbol or float). Though I kinda like the "#1" idea now that you mention it, haha, even though if reversed if compared to max... but yeah, something like "$a1" looks more "PD-ish", right? 

In any case, I welcome any kind of feedback!

cheers
 

cheers
Miller

On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 08:55:58PM +0200, Roman Haefeli wrote:
> yawn.....
>
>
> On Son, 2018-04-01 at 17:42 -0300, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> > Hi, currently, if you want to use $0, you need an object cause it
> > becomes "0" when it's inside messages.
> >
> > Pd-l2ork and Purr Data implemented a way that $0 works in the same
> > way as in objects than in messages, and I think it is a great
> > feature, as many patches can be significantly simplified. I guess
> > most Pd users here know what I'm talking about.
>
> By implementing that, you would once forever prohibit the proper way to
> expand $0 which is expanding to the selector of the message. That's why
> I oppose your proposition. (Actually, it doesn't matter whether I'm
> opposing it or not since I don't contribute any Pd code. But I can at
> least point to the fallacies.)
>
> I absolutely see the convenience of your proposition, but there would
> be no good explanation for it. Consider it a bad coincidence that both
> kinds of variables use a dollar prefix, there is nothing in common
> between them (expanding to creation arguments versus expanding to atoms
> of messages). Personally, I would totally find it convenient if Pi was
> an integer number, it would make so many things so much easier. 
>
> Roman



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