On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 11:41:53PM -0700, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
I think my proposal of having Pd automagically make floats out of selectors that look like numbers solves half of the problem, as well as being consistent with what's written in the last paragraph of 2.3.1. The other half is already solved by [makefilename %d], and could be made more consistent by having message boxes automagically convert $1 in "symbol 15" to a symbol-atom. Possibly the same for the arg to [symbol].
While I tend to agree and think this sounds sensible, it could clash with this part of the manual (first paragraph of 2.3.1) that hints at problems with numerical symbols as selectors:
"Messages contain a selector followed by any number of arguments. The selector is a symbol, which appears in the patch as a non-numeric string with no white space, semicolons, or commas."
I'm not sure what "appears in the patch" should mean. It definitly means that numercial-symbol selectors don't get shown and cannot be written into a patch, so you cannot use them in the editor where "real" selectors should be written, like in [route]: There's no [route "15"] in Pd, where "15" should mean a numerical symbol. And if you allow [s 15], should [table 15] also be allowed? And would 15 be a symbol or a float then?
It seems to be fine if [symbol 15( would act like [15(->[makefilename %d], but who really needs the former when you already have the latter? And what about symbols with whitespace, like [symbol My Documents/Drum Loop.wav]?
Additionally numbers inside messages or object boxes have so many special meanings in Pd (i.e. they turn "1 two three" into a list message, they change the mode of [select] or [route], they make [15] be [f 15] etc.), that it seems to me that some small changes here could open a Pandora's Box and the sole reason for this IMO is legalistic pedantry. Numbers maybe already are overloaded with automagic.
However I would like to see some proper quoting mechanism in the editor.
Ciao
Frank