Hallo, Matteo Sisti Sette hat gesagt: // Matteo Sisti Sette wrote:
I always thought that the two following conjectures were true:
conjecture 1 - any given message output by any PD object can always be reproduced by writing it down literally in a message box
Pd's patch format doesn't know about numeric symbols: Every number written in any object or message of a patch is just that: a number.
conjecture 2 - a PD message is simply a human-readable string that you can always "see" by for example [print]ing it, or prepending a "set" and viewing it in a message box, and two messages that "appear" identical are identical.
Yes, this conjecture fails for some kinds of Pd messages. One is the symbol-float: it's not possible to "see" the difference to a float-float. Also pointers, which are in Pd for ages (since 1996 or so), are non-printable in full: You can print their data, but not the pointer itself. Even if two pointers share the same data, they don't need to be the same pointers.
Now I see both conjectures are wrong (kinda disappointed since I loved them) but once I assume that, and thank to your explanation, everything is clear and coherent.
A desired message can always be generated using a makefilename or something, and the difference between different cases can be detected - though all this in a less immediate way than I thought.
Acutally except for numeric symbols and for the "whitespace symbols" [keyname] sometime generates one doesn't meet "strange symbols" a lot in real life, so it's not a real issue in practice.
Ciao
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__