15 Jun
2004
15 Jun
'04
12:49 p.m.
On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 05:31:08PM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
In Pd it is possible to build your own modules, that you then can use
inside your patch. You also can of course code modules. I recently
counted how many modules I have - downloaded or self-created. I have
4781 uniquely named pd-files on my disk, every one of which I could
use as an object.
When designing a modular system, it might become important to be able
to handle such enormous amounts of possible objects.
Just some quick ideas:
- Module browser, with thumbnails/previews (but only if the nature of the
system makes them recognizable)
- Description/Comment fields (searchable, be it gui or commandline)
- Special find functionlity: search for number of modules, presence
or exclusion of certain modules.
Directly dealing with several thousand files will always be
troublesome.
But my concept is for rather simple things, and will not lead to
so much variation as pd does. It should be much faster and easier
to understand for the lack of complexity and therby flexibility.
Regarding your design: It reminds me of Numerology,
which is a cool
sequencer that makes routing the way you suggested, with drop-down
boxes. But Numerology just has a very small amount of possible
"objects": it's own tracks, AFAIK.
But routing happens from top to bottom, through the blocks as
they are laid out in my concept. Just imagine patch cords from
each block to all blocks below it.
The menus are for selecting module types.
---
Thorsten Wilms