On Sep 6, 2011, at 3:53 AM, fbar wrote:
On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:44:33AM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
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].
Forgot to add: Of course it is possible and legal to "use" numerical
or
non-printable symbols as selectors, but they have to be constructed
dynamically and cannot be typed, in accordance with the restrictions
mentioned in the manual. Instead something like this can be used:
[makefilename %d]
|
| [makefilename %d]
| |
[select symbol-dummy]
I used [makefilename %d] a lot in the rj library's [m_chorddict]
dictionary for chords, where some chord names are proper symbols, like
"m7", while others are floats like 7. The float-names get converted to
symbols internally to look up chord notes in a data structure array
keyed by symbols only (using [m_symbolarray]).
So this is a great example of why Pd should have a more complete
dynamic typing system. There are good reasons to have arbitrary
symbols, including "43", like m_chorddict. To make such a system work
in Pd, and have anything that can be interpreted as number be a float,
there needs to be some dynamic typing, like Tcl, Python, etc. do.
This particular issue is only one small part of the picture, and
should be considered in the whole picture.
Its obviously working for you, Frank, as it is, since you are the
master of hacks like that. But I still remember how brutally painful
it was to learn Pd's type system. I think with a few well thought out
changes, we can make it work better for everyone with minimal pain.
.hc
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