On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 11:41:53PM -0700, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: > I think my proposal of having Pd automagically make floats out of > selectors that look like numbers solves half of the problem, as well as > being consistent with what's written in the last paragraph of 2.3.1. The > other half is already solved by [makefilename %d], and could be made > more consistent by having message boxes automagically convert $1 > in "symbol 15" to a symbol-atom. Possibly the same for the arg > to [symbol].
While I tend to agree and think this sounds sensible, it could clash with this part of the manual (first paragraph of 2.3.1) that hints at problems with numerical symbols as selectors: "Messages contain a selector followed by any number of arguments. The selector is a symbol, which appears in the patch as a non-numeric string with no white space, semicolons, or commas." I'm not sure what "appears in the patch" should mean. It definitly means that numercial-symbol selectors don't get shown and cannot be written into a patch, so you cannot use them in the editor where "real" selectors should be written, like in [route]: There's no [route "15"] in Pd, where "15" should mean a numerical symbol. And if you allow [s 15], should [table 15] also be allowed? And would 15 be a symbol or a float then? It seems to be fine if [symbol 15( would act like [15(->[makefilename %d], but who really needs the former when you already have the latter? And what about symbols with whitespace, like [symbol My Documents/Drum Loop.wav]? Additionally numbers inside messages or object boxes have so many special meanings in Pd (i.e. they turn "1 two three" into a list message, they change the mode of [select] or [route], they make [15] be [f 15] etc.), that it seems to me that some small changes here could open a Pandora's Box and the sole reason for this IMO is legalistic pedantry. Numbers maybe already are overloaded with automagic. However I would like to see some proper quoting mechanism in the editor. Ciao -- Frank _______________________________________________ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list