On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 bbogart@ryerson.ca wrote:
PD has abstractions (Objects which refer to patches stored in seperate files from the main patch) and has subpatches which open up a new window to contain a new patch but is saved as part of the parent patch. Abstractions support arguments, subpatches don't. you use pd [objectname] to make a subpatch.
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Orm Finnendahl wrote:
Sorry if I'm missing something, but could it be that you don't know of the "pd" object, which is the same as the "patcher object" in Max/MSP? It does everything you mention and is stored in the same file as the main patch.
That's true. Actually I expected that feature to be in the objects menu, because that's how it is in jMax, in which [inlet] and [outlet] also have their menu entries.
Speaking of which, if a subpatcher has several inlets, how would I distinguish them easily?
I must say I'm glad PD has got those. Now there are less reasons for me to stick with jMax. I still need an automatic .jmax->.pd converter though. (I don't have so many patchfiles but I really don't want to do that by hand.)
Other things I find excessively annoying is the inability to wrap objectbox/commentbox text properly. E.g. if i create a comment, i can embed newlines, but when I save the patch, that information is not saved; in jMax i only have to set the width of the commentbox. This gets really annoying for objectboxes like:
@convolve * + 0 ( 3 3 int16 # -1 1 -1 1 4 1 -1 1 1 )
which take an inane amount of space (width) in the window. I could take out the list literal and make it a message box and add a loadbang so that my lines don't get too long but i consider that to be a kludge.
I don't see the difference between what you describe and what an abstraction is in pd (it is basically one file in the same directory as the main patch and the main patch stores references to the abstractions instead of the abstraction code to minimize file size).
I said I'd like abstractions that are included inside .pd files as if they were subpatchers, but otherwise work like abstractions. It would encourage aggressive abstraction; otherwise it is tempting to copypaste subpatchers in order to keep everything in one file.
Did you check the "graph on parent" feature?
I did today. I found it a bit disappointing, but nevertheless, it works, and it makes it possible to add a triple-slider class in 3 minutes (instead of 3 hours of painful java coding in jMax), which is a non-neglectible advantage.
I attach a patch which dynamically allocates a matrix of checkboxes.
Thank you. Your help is much appreciated.
(I like that pd allows patches to modify themselves... I wonder whether it could get a bit easier though)
Mathieu Bouchard http://artengine.ca/matju