While definitely understanding your irritation, the only point of your writing i was able to find is that it would make it 'easier'.
I definitely cannot support the idea of making one special case (that arises a lot, i admit) easier, while disregarding completely the concepts and consistency.
Luckily, i don't have make this decision. However, i still think $0 in message boxes should expand to the selector of the incoming message.
roman
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 08:54 -0800, Phil Stone wrote:
Roman Haefeli wrote:
This is obviously a loop. All this has been said and proposed before in the thread [1], that has been posted by alex porres a few posts back. Sorry for not having brought any new perspectives into the discussion, but having just repeated what has been said already.
Hi Roman,
I think the fact that this is an eternally-recurring topic points to just how irritating this one little foible of Pd is -- it's confusing to newbies, and it's annoying to more experienced programmers.
I want to address the point you brought up in the first message:
$0 in messages is only special in the sense, that it has no meaning at all. it wouldn't make it less special to use it as a container for canvas identifier in message boxes. $-variables in objects have a different meaning from $-variables in message boxes, no matter what. I understand, that it would make patching often a lot easier, but conceptually it would be exceptional to make $0 in message-boxes be replaced by the canvas-identifier, while all other $n-variables in message-boxes get replaced by the n-th element of the incoming list.
But $0 is exceptional in *all* cases! Its use in objects has a very different meaning than the use of $1, $2.... in objects. Yet no one calls for eliminating $0 from object boxes -- why is the same argument repeated over and over as justification for its prohibition in message boxes? I just don't understand this.
If only (as many have said) "$0" had been written as "#0" or something else completely un-encumbered with ideas about what "$" must mean in Pd.
The only thing i don't really get: Why seems there some agreement, that using $0 to get the selector could be confusing?
Well, I think that would make things even worse - further muddying the waters, as it were, by adding yet another meaning to the dollar-sign. I don't see it as any more consistent or "pure", given the unique role that $0 has in *all* cases.
When all is said and done, things in the Pd world will go on as they have, and we won't really suffer because of this one little grain of sand in our shell. But we probably will continue to discuss it every few months!
Best,
Phil http://www.pkstonemusic.com/pubmusic.html
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