Em sáb., 27 de nov. de 2021 às 08:23, João Pais <jmmmpais@gmail.com> escreveu:
It could also be clearly mentioned that subpatches receive messages sent
to pd-[subpatch], and abstractions are named [abstraction].pd (if I'm
recalling correctly) - unless there is a namecanvas used in those.

how isn't it clearly mentioned?

The first one is mentioned in [pd Dynamic-Patching], although it might be easier to understand if there is an example immediately under the text.

what do you mean by "immediately under the text"?

As you can see, I have two categories in this documentation file, both highlighted and separated. They are: "Messages to Pd" (even though I also document a couple of messages "from" Pd, namely: pd-dsp-started/stopped).

The other section is "Messages you can send to Pd files and canvases", so yeah, this is where I document this, cause this is its category and it only makes sense. And I clearly document all that you say here right in the first paragraph. Quoting my text "You can communicate with a Pd window by sending messages to the name of the file (which communicates to the main window). You can also commucate with a subpatch's window by sending messages to the subpatch's name. In both cases you need to preceed the send name with 'pd-'. Alternatively you can name a main window or a subpatch with [namecanvas]." You can see then that I ask people to check  the help file of [namecanvas], which has also been quite updated and also gives the same information and uses some examples and refers back to this document.

But there are enough examples of [s pd-xxxx] in the patch anyway to deduce it.

'deduce' it? Well, if you read that text, there's nothing to deduce :) 

The second isn't mentioned at all, the search results for "abstraction" and ".pd" return elements in other types of contexts.

You can see I also mentioned, in the same way as subpatches, that you can communicate with Pd patches, and I also have examples for that case so people could 'deduce' if I hadn't mentioned.  

I guess I can be more clear that an abstraction is a Pd file, but that seemed obvious to me. I also didn't want to give an explicit example with an abstraction cause then I'd have to create yet another file. But this might be a good thing to call them both in th help file of namecanvas and this pd-message file.

But I also made it clear how [namecanvas] is useful for abstractions in its help file, that I emphatically tell people to check for reference. And I don't think it makes sense to talk to an abstraction using its filename, cause you can't just communicate with a single abstraction. I also don't know of a use case that from a parent patch you need to send messages to abstractions like that. Seems like the sane way to communicate with abstractions is via inlets. 

I can only see a reason to change the main patch window of an abstraction from within the abstraction, to edit, for instance, is graph size. But in this case it makes sense to use [namecanvas] with a local name using "$0".

For now I guess I can make a more modest mentioning about this issue and how you probably want to use [namecanvas] in as abstraction's main window instead of sending messages to its filename. I dunno, maybe first we need to agree if it makes sense at all for me to document "messages to files/canvases", which ones, etc...

cheers