I am making a digital MIDI instrument with pd. I have constructed buttons from Canvas objects that change either the colour or the label when you click them. However, I would like to be able to change both the colour and the label simultaneously.

Is there a way for a canvas object to receive multiple messages at once in the "receive symbol" box?

@Ossicone said:

Is there a way for a canvas object to receive multiple messages at once in the "receive symbol" box?

No, but it's not necessary.

To change color, you send a message beginning with the symbol tag "color" to the canvas. It's this symbol tag that determines the meaning of the message.

The "receive symbol" is only the conduit through which the message is delivered. This can be named whatever you want.

To change color and label simultaneously, you'd send two messages to the receive symbol, with the respective symbol tags at the start of those messages.

hjh

@FFW why will this exact patch not work in my vanilla?

@4poksy did you set the receive symbol of the bang?

lol no, that was it.. doif!

@ddw_music Ok thank you. However I'm still a bit confused.
What do I need to write in the receive box in the properties of my canvas in order to
change the colour of the label
change what the label says
change the colour of the canvas itself
all at the same time

For context this is so that the background and the label of a button change colour when a key is pressed

@Ossicone You can use any receive name you wish, but it is a good idea to add a $0 to the name as in @FFW's example above. $0 is translated to a number as the patch is opened. If you then open the patch again...... (because you are using it multiple times.. maybe as an abstraction) the number assigned to $0 will be different, so the receive names will be different and there will be no crosstalk.

So something like $0-button1.
Here is the help file for sending messages to a canvas or a GUI....... help.zip
Open [pd Changing_GUI_Properties] from within that file to see the messages.
I have added an example [allatonce] in that zip.
David.

@Ossicone said:

What do I need to write in the receive box in the properties of my canvas in order to
change the colour of the label
change what the label says
change the colour of the canvas itself
all at the same time

Think of it like this.

The receive name is the name of the street.

The actions (change color, change label etc) are car brands traveling on the street.

Your question is, what should I name the street so that a Chevy and a Ford and a Porsche and a Tesla and a Toyota can all drive on the street?

And the answer of course is that the name of the street doesn't matter because all the cars can travel through it.

It's a non question. You don't need a separate Toyota street and a differently named Ford street. You just define one receive symbol -- one street. And you send all the cars -- all the messages -- through the one street. "color", "label" etc are messages. The receive symbol is a send/receive name. There is no correlation between them.

hjh