Hi Wade, a few very superficial remarks from my side (i'm in a hurry....).

1. I don't use straight PD code because of exactly the problems you have.
2. I use flext.
3. As far as i remember (and deducing from flext internal code) i see the

following points

//why do I have 6 outlets defined here but 7 show up on the sphere~ object

box?

The reason is that for a signal object the leftmost signal inlet is implicit. It's always there.

In sphere_tilde_perform:

//no inclusion? what happens to w[0]?

Miller knows it.

t_sphere_tilde *ref = (t_sphere_tilde *)(w[1]); t_sample *in1 = (t_sample *)(w[2]); //centerx t_sample *in2 = (t_sample *)(w[3]); //centery t_sample *in3 = (t_sample *)(w[4]); //centerz t_sample *in4 = (t_sample *)(w[5]); //radius t_sample *in5 = (t_sample *)(w[6]); //conrolx t_sample *in6 = (t_sample *)(w[7]); //conroly t_sample *in7 = (t_sample *)(w[8]); //conrolz t_sample *out = (t_sample *)(w[9]); //outlet int n = (int)(w[10]);//number of samples in block

Look good.

Apart from that you should possibly clean up the code a bit..... one running index would probably be more clear and efficient than incrementing each pointer individually.

void sphere_tilde_dsp(t_sphere_tilde *ref, t_signal **sp) { dsp_add(sphere_tilde_perform, 10, ref, sp[0]->s_vec, sp[1]->s_vec, sp[2]->s_vec, sp[3]->s_vec,

sp[4]->s_vec, sp[5]->s_vec, sp[6]->s_vec, sp[0]->s_n);

}

You announce that you are passing 10 arguments here, while you are passing only 9!! Hence, you should pass another sp[7]->s_vec. Remember that you have 7 inbound and 1 outbound signals.

//optional question: what happens if I want to have an optional //number of defaults within the object box? //e.g. [sphere~ centerx centery centerz radius]

This won't work if your centerx, centery, centerz , radius are passed in as signals. Signals can't have a default value defined inside the external. Probably you don't need signals for these values? Will simple float messages do it as well?

best greetings, Thomas

Oh, i think i know:

//no inclusion? what happens to w[0]?

w[0] is the address of the dsp function. Therefore, the internal PD signal processing loop looks (omitting type-casts) like

while(w = w(w) );

That's it. It's great. It's a bit like the GUT isn't it?

Thomas

----- Original Message ----- From: "PD Trouble" pdman@aproximation.org To: "the great ones" pd-list@iem.kug.ac.at Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 11:23 PM Subject: [PD] So far so failed on my part

Your help has bee very, well, helpful but alas my moron nature is

dominating. I need further help writing my first external. The questions are in the comments. (http://www.tessabeth.org/code/)

Many thanks again to Thomas Grill!

-wade

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