--- On Sun, 4/12/09, Frank Barknecht fbar@footils.org wrote:
From: Frank Barknecht fbar@footils.org Subject: Re: [PD] Pd FLOSS Manual Update pt 1 To: pd-list@iem.at Date: Sunday, April 12, 2009, 8:29 AM Hallo, Jonathan Wilkes hat gesagt: // Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
I agree that meta-messages should be called
meta-messages, if
they're called anything. But I don't see how
to make the
distinction clear without having a comprehensive table
of relevant
pd-vanilla objects and their behavior regarding
meta-messages.
Why do the first inlets of pack and symbol accept
[pitch( ?
Why wouldn't the secondary inlets of pack and
symbol accept
[pitch( ?
Or their behaviour regarding data messages: Why doesn't the first inlet of float accept symbol-messages? *Of course* you have to learn each object's behaviour to be able to use it. But if nobody tells you that there's a difference between "pitch" and "symbol pitch" many of the object's behaviour will seem arcane to you.
In fact I believe, that beginners have difficulites to understand messages because their tutors ignore these issues. Maybe they ignore them because they themselves feel uncomfortable with messages, meta-messages, symbols and other magic things - and a tutor needs to understand a topic in a much deeper way than his student.
I'm not comfortable with the right inlet of [symbol] rejecting [pitch(, nor with [pitch( working only in the first inlet of pack. And not so comfortable really with [list one two(--[route one] behaving differently than [list 1 2(--[route 1].
But people are way too scared of meta-messages. They are nothing special. If you understand the difference between "symbol"- and "float"- messages, there is no problem understanding the difference between a "float"- and a "set"-message or between a "symbol" and a "read"-messages. And you surely are using these messages all the time.
Maybe they're nothing special to you because you already understand and are comfortable with all the special cases. But I can imagine a beginner getting really confused over [route symbol] not stripping the selector off of [symbol pitch(. It's confusing and inconsistent, and symbols/lists in Pd are limited enough that a comprehensive list of behaviors for the basic symbol-handling objects is doable. (see below)
Why does the second inlet of [list] accept [pitch( but
the first
inlet of [makefilename %s] doesn't?
[list] objects accept everything and convert all incoming messages to data messages, i.e. to list-messages. [list trim] converts back to meta messages.
How do message-box dollar signs handle meta-messages?
They take the first element as selector, and then start counting from there.
How does [list length] handle them?
See above: Like all [list]-objects it first converts to a list.
Do you need [list trim] to route a float list by the
first value?
No but it doesn't hurt.
Ciao
Frank
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