--- On Wed, 2/10/10, hard off hard.off@gmail.com wrote:

From: hard off hard.off@gmail.com Subject: Re: [PD] vertical column of msg boxes To: "Martin Peach" martin.peach@sympatico.ca Cc: "Jonathan Wilkes" jancsika@yahoo.com, pd-list@iem.at Date: Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 3:23 PM that is a brilliant idea.  if lines were always hidden behind boxes, patching would be so much neater.

Hi,

I think hiding cords behind boxes would make the patches harder to read. In the attached cords-pdext (which is my favorite "do once" idiom) you've only got four pixels and a judgment of the wire angle to know that the wire stretches all the way from the outlet of [0] to the right inlet of [spigot]. If the graphics were a little more evolved you could make it so that the cord looks is visible in the background of the text without obscuring it, but as it is I prefer the current clear sloppiness to ambiguous neatness.

In the straight vertical column of msg boxes I suggested and Martin's tcpclient-help.pd (never thought of that, btw), we're both indulging in the ambiguous neatness-- I mean if you really want to be true to telling what a patch does just by looking at it, I think you'd have to line up messages as in tcpclient-help-example.pd
(attached). That's the only way you can know for sure where the wires go without moving stuff around in the patch.

But since all those messages boxes are obviously _supposed_ to go to the same place, I think it's acceptable to make it more readable for the user at the expense of making it harder to locate a mistake (e.g., forgetting to connect one of the message boxes).

But if the text in boxes was moved over 2 pixels so it didn't clash with the wires, I would prefer vertical msg box columns to the 45 degree workaround.

-Jonathan