Hi,

I want to be able to add commands to a list and step forward through it, similar to a "channel" in a tracker style sequencer.

I figure a good way to do it is to just use [text].

Or? Could there be a better solution? Or even abstraction. The ELSE library?

...

Image for reference:

All good

@porres said:

but check [else/score] and [else/score2]

@cfry did you check these?

@porres Hi, yes, they are interesting. else/sequencer also has the feature to be banged a step at a time. Cool.

@oid where is [list-drip] coming from? Deken says shadylib but it is not there.

edit: never mind, I found it in list-abs

trackthing.pd

Can you help me to get this working? I tried to debug with [print] but I could not figure out the local variable hierarchy. (screen shot and patch is for visual reference)

And then maybe we can do a few new commands so I can handle it?

On a side note: No need for sudoku today! Pd and @Oid will keep me fresh now when chatgpt now make so complex code for my arduinos that I can not read it anymore.

@cfry The abstraction part is supposed to be run with $0 as it's argument to pass the parents dollar zero so those commands in the parent patch can communicate with it. Change those $1s to $0s if you want everything in one patch, or the $0s into $1s if you want commands in both the abstraction and the parent patch and all should be well. It will be atleast a few hours before i can offer patches, computer died right after yesterday's post so have to setup the new one and do all that stuff which goes with a new computer. Once you get the basic functionality working it will probably start making sense.

@cfry it probably picked up [list-dripdex] which is [list-drip] w/ index
I think list-abs could use a rewrite using the 'new' [list] objects..
I recommend just installing zexy and using [drip] though.. externals will always be faster than abstractions

@cfry Took care of the dollar args for you and fixed a small oversight in the previous which made it not work for commands with more than one argument. Also added a simple trace which prints stack size, command, and the top 10 elements on the stack, should help you in figuring what is going on. The [s $0fpush] is the same as $0push, nothing fancy there, it was just a simple way to make the trace slightly easier to read.
trackthing.pd

Edit: fixed a bug.

@seb-harmonik.ar

I think list-abs could use a rewrite using the 'new' [list] objects.

I started in on that but realized that the overall design of list-abs is an issue, often what takes 5 list-abs abstractions can be done with a single [list store] and some glue, some can be replaced with [list store] and a message and have no need to be abstracted away. I think a good [list store] tutorial and a much smaller (more thought out and planed) replacement for list-abs would be a better idea. List-abs is fine as it is for keeping old patches alive.

@oid Thank you so much. It is coming along quite well.

Question time:

Could we make a 2 argument command, like the loop function? I could not figure out how to use 2 arguments.

Is there a specific reason why you used the value object? I found use for it, but I am just curious.

How would you send the final out of the patch? As I patched it now I I am not using the value object for this.

I think I may add more values later, like val1 val2 val3.

I commented all over in to help me understand what happens. Is there any spots where I totally misunderstood it?

If there are any awkward edits I made feel free to correct it or point it out. Pointer about suitable syntax is also appreciated.

trackthing-oid.pd

@cfry Doing two arguments is just changing how many arguments you pop off the stack and replacing the [route bang float] after the command receive to [route bang list]. So a loop command could be made like this (untested and not even fully thought through):

I used [value] because add works off the last value that was output and [value] keeps things neater than tying lots of stuff to a single [float]. In this case you don't need to use [v $0val] to get the output for val, it just stores the float for add, same, and any other command you want to use it for, sending the float to both [v $0val] and [s $0out] is exactly what I would do in this case. I don't think $0-same will work as you expect, there is no need to pop for that and out is getting a bang instead of a float, just need to do [route bang] -> [v $0val] -> [s $0out].

Your comments look to be correct. [r $0stack] is used for the trace but it is useful for other things, you can have a print command which just bangs the message [send $0print( to [s $0stack( and then a [r $0print] connected to a [print] so you can check the stack's condition in those cases when things did not work as planned and you did not have the trace on. Notice the send message is to $0print and not $0-print, receives with the $0 hyphen prefix are only for commands and you will get into trouble if you use that prefix for non-commands. In this case we send the print to $0print instead of $0-print because if the stack is empty it would output a bang which would bang the message again and send you into an infinite loop. Remember to save before testing new commands, it is easy to miss an obvious loop like this.

We prepend to stack instead of append because that means we always get to do [delete 0 $1(, if we appended we would have to keep track of stack size and then subtract how many to delete so we can do a [delete $1 $2(, just more efficient to do it this way in pd land. There is a bit of a flaw here as well, think about what happens if you run the line 1 2 3, one is pushed, then two, then three, so three is top of the stack and the contents of the stack is reversed as 3 2 1, as it should be, the issues is if we have a command which pushes more than one value onto the stack. If you had the command which just bangs the message [1 2 3( to [s $0push] you would have one as top of the stack instead of three so in commands you need to send your lists backwards. Slightly annoying and could be fixed but would be less efficient, so I just remember that when patching commands which push a list, the list needs to be backwards or it will cause confusion elsewhere.

I will do another post later tonight or tomorrow going into the rest and elaborating on a few things.

Edit: Suppose that loop command only works for looping to a point earlier in the program, which is probably workable but perhaps not ideal. We will deal with that in the next post and start really exploiting that this is a programming language and will save you work as any programming language should. Trying not to dump too much on you all at once, next post will be a big one. Or maybe you are already ahead of me? can't quite tell.

Edit2: No, that loop will not quite work, for got to resend the float to $0-goto on each iteration, only loops once.