Hallo all!
I think this is pretty cool - thanks to IOhannes' IEMguts, here is [templater].
Make and connect up some objects in a patch (for example, the common [f 0]X[+ 1] idiom) and save it as myobjects-template.pd somewhere in your pd path. Now, you can use [templater myobjects] to automatically construct and connect those objects within the current patch.
There are two modes, relative and absolute, where relative spawns the objects just below the place where you created the [templater] object, and absolute just creates the objects exactly as they exist in the template file.
I included two extremely simple templates to start things off (the oft-requested "metro with a toggle" and "f + 1 mod counter" idioms), but you can make the templates as complex as you like. The only current restriction is no subpatches, but I plan to remedy this shortly!
I'd love it if anyone that tries this out posts their templates here - it could become a very nice way to share and refine pd idioms.
The biggest drawback currently is that without ugly mouse-emulation hacks, there's no way for me to delete the [templater] object once it's spawned, so you have to do that by hand. Of course, it's still a ton faster than locating your template patch, opening it, selecting and copying its contents, pasting them, and closing the template.
On that note, IOhannes, feel like making a [canvasdelete] object : )? (I of course don't know how easy/hard/safe this is)
As mentioned above, [templater] requires IEMguts. I've included a build for Mac OS X Intel below.
Best Luke