--- On Wed, 8/12/09, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] Help Docs: element vs. item To: "Jonathan Wilkes" jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" hans@at.or.at, "puredata mailing list" pd-list@iem.at Date: Wednesday, August 12, 2009, 10:20 PM On Sun, 9 Aug 2009, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
Other than the help patch for [list], the term
"selector" hasn't come up much because each inlet/outlet just has a list of accepted messages and a description.
Actually, "selector" would be the most sensible column name for the column that lists "the accepted messages"...
It would, but there currently aren't column names in the pddp template.
Are you looking at a different template than the one for [float] in
pd-ext?
The word "selector" appears mainly where the presence
or absence of a selector could easily lead to confusion- in a subpatch in print-help.pd, route-help.pd, and probably for [symbol] and [list]
right.
Unlike the word "message" (or the word "word"), I
think "selector" requires a definition when it is used, or at least a reference to the manual where it is explained in detail.
"message" also "requires" a definition as much as anything else, but in the Pd world, there's a greater tendency to let the people just guess what something is and figure out just as much as they need to know... if they can figure it out (which may be somewhat more difficult to do than to believe to have figured it out).
Hmm...I don't think these more general terms require definitions, because they are superficially describing what one types to produce the desired behavior. There's an implicit step when the term "message" is used (i.e., typing something in a message box and sending it to the object). But if you look at the Max docs where they say, "the word 'set' followed by a number", there's not even that.
If "selector" is going to be used in all the help patches, it should also appear as common parlance in the tutorials (especially the first few where messages and message boxes are discussed).
-Jonathan