Hans Roels wrote:

Hello,

If you open the help file of an abstraction and no help file is present, the abstraction itself is opened but without the arguments! Is there a good reason for this or is this a bug?

the explanation is, that Pd tries several names for helpfiles: "<absname>-help.pd" is the most common, but there is also "help-<absname>.pd" (at least there was; to my knowledge this has been a bit deprecated) and (watchout!) "<absname>.pd".

for various (good) reasons the abtraction's path is always within the search-path for it's help-files.

all of this eventually leads to an abstraction opening itself as it's help-patch.

whether it is a bug, i don't know. but of course: if the abstraction's code is well documented, then it might be ok to see itself as it's documentation.

the fact that the help-patch get's opened without arguments, is by design, intended and/or a feature.

It seems more logical to me that the open function would be an identical substitute for the help function if there is no help file. The present situation is quite confusing: I remember trying to debug an abstraction and realising (after a lot of time) that I wasn't working in the opened abstraction (with arguments) but in the opened abstraction as a help file (without arguments).

luckily Pd will show you the arguments given to the abstraction in it's window bar. the is no save way to automatically keep you from debugging the "wrong" instance of an abstraction.

fgamsdr IOhannes