Hallo, Mathieu Bouchard hat gesagt: // Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Frank Barknecht wrote:
I believe, the choice between a 1-dimensional language like SC and a 2-dimensional one like Pd is a state of mind thing. I do my fair share of 1-dim programming,
Non-graphical languages are still 2-dimensional as they are written, because people use lines (rows) as logical units of code. The compiler makes a largely 1-dimensional interpretation of it, but this is not how people write and read code. Similarly, Pd almost completely ignores the actual position of the objects (except [inlet] and [outlet]) when interpreting a patch.
In usual text based languages like C, Lisp, Forth, Python, Java, ... the second dimension is largely irrelevant, because every identifier only is concerned with what's left or right of it, not what's on top or below. Line breaks or indentation have some meaning in some of these languages, but I wouldn't really take this as a new dimension. It's maybe 1.25-dimensional. ;)
Even traditional math notation has more dimentions than these languages, if you think of the symbols for sums or integrals. In Max/Pd this is the rule, e.g. objects have arguments (left/right) and in/outlets (top/bottom). A very interesting document in this regard is Bert Sutherland's thesis "The On-line Graphical Specification of Computer Procedures" from 1966(!): http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/13474
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__