----- Original Message ----- > From: Mathieu Bouchard <[email protected]> > To: Frank Barknecht <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected] > Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:45 AM > Subject: Re: [PD] [pd] tables as patch storage > > Le 2012-03-27 à 12:50:00, Frank Barknecht a écrit : >> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 12:20:51PM +0200, Charles Goyard wrote: >>> Billy Stiltner wrote: >>>> why havent i seen more usage of tables as patch storage? >>> Maybe because you can only store numbers, not strings. >>> A textfile seems more versatile. >> Or a message box. Miller's help-files are crammed full with message > boxes used as patch storage. Patch-level storga it nice for toplevel patches, > but often not really useful in abstractions, when each abstraction instance > needs a different state, although they all share the same patch file. > > [textfile] fakes being a filehandle or linked-list in the way it has a > sequential interface instead of a random-access interface, even though it's > really stored in RAM as a binbuf. > > arrays ([table]) don't have that limitation, but have other limitations. > This creates unnecessary decisions in Pd, as people have to pick between > free-form anythings that have to be iterated through, or direct access to > items > that have to be floats, and they can't have both advantages at once.
Anythings aren't really free-form, either. "float my boat" isn't a valid message in Pd. But even if you're reading a Pd file with [textfile]-- which as far as I know doesn't ever start with the word "float"-- you're limited in what you can do with it if you use the vanilla objects. The obvious choice to filter messages, [route], will choke on data structure definitions like [struct foo float bar] and give you an error if you happen to [route foo]. > > (Of course, there are externals, but they're not the kind of thing used by > the kind of people who come up with list-abs.) I don't know what that means. What does that mean? -Jonathan > > ______________________________________________________________________ > | Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> > http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list > _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
