hmm.. generally this could be a good idea, but message sending is most useful when initialising a number of receives ie:
[loadbang] | |; init-1 6 / |; init-2 symbol foo | |; init-3 -2 \
which is far more elegant than the the trigger/send replacement, especially with more fields..
i think its important for students to recognise that this feature of messaging has a role to play, rather than trying to veil its use. in my experience people will tend to use [send foo] more often when they start pd, then begin abbreviating to [s foo] before they appreciate the msg shorthand [; foo[. but you are right it is a little confusing for new users..
perhaps this just needs clearer documenting? 'what does a semi-colon at the start of a message mean?' in the FAQ?
dmotd
On Friday 20 March 2009 10:38:06 Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
Here's something that I'd like to propose for the style guide, based on my teaching experience:
- use [send foo] instead of [; foo( for all sends that aren't
dynamically set
A lot of people find the [; foo( syntax confusing, and since it is commonly used, it often gets in the way of newbies understanding the patch. While the [; foo( syntax is definitely useful for dynamic sends, I don't think there is an advantage to using for the regular sends. So for example:
[dsp 1(
[send pd]
instead of
|; / |pd dsp 1 \
This change highlights the dataflow aspect of the messages over the text-style programming with syntax of the message box. At the very least, I think that the help patches should use this style, and I have started to use this style in my regular programming and it feels quite natural once you are used to it. I find it easier to read.
(as for [s foo] versus [send foo] that's an issue I want to avoid in this discussion).
.hc
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