I am working on an instrument that has abstractions that operate on two types of sources: 1) arrays and 2) sound sources (as defined by send~ objects).

I would like to have, in the graph-on-parent for each abstraction, a popup menu that can be used to switch sound sources. And, because send~ buffers may be named a variety of different things and depend on various abstractions' creation arguments, I would like to have a way to enumerate through all the different send~ buffers and populate a popup menu with them. Is there a way to do this?

It would be nice to have the ability to do this for arrays, but the send~ buffers are more important to me. I'd also like to do this without using any externals (I'm using Pd-vanilla 0.40-2).

Thanks!
Jake

there's no popup menu for vanilla, and even in extended it's kinda tricky to make one.

i think maybe the best option for vanilla would be to use a vertical radio (vradio), and then have a column of canvas objects to display the send names.

for info on how to add a label to a canvas, create a canvas, and then right click on it, and look at the 'edit' subpatch in the help file.

make sure you name your canvases with $0-names so they will be unique to each instance of the abstraction.

so, something like:

[loadbang]
|
[symbol $1]
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[label $1(
|

and then name the canvas $0-canvas-1

Hmm... thanks....

My question is still unanswered: Is there a way to enumerate through all the send~s at runtime and dynamically build a list?

Also, how would making a popup menu work in Pd-extended?

Thanks!

well, i don't really see why you need to make a list...but if you do, then isn't the list just going to be the list of your creation arguments?

so if you make [abstractionA left right up down], then the sends will be named [s~ left] , [s~ right], [s~ up] , [s~ down] ?

i assume you'd always know how many creation arguments your abstraction needs, because otherwise you will be creating dummy [s~ $5] type objects, which is not good because it will give you console errors.

so your 'list' of send objects would just be:

[loadbang]
|
[t b b b ...]
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[symbol $1][symbol $2][symbol $3]...etc
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[pack s s s...]

(just assume there are cables going from the trigger into each symbol, and also from each symbol into the pack)

for popup menus in extended have a look at the toxy library. but it really does seem tricky, i don't know how to do it. it involves coding.

the way i would do it is just to assign a number to each send, and then spigot them from the value given by a vradio.

[r $0-radio]
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[== 0] [r~ $0-inlet]
| |
[*~ ]
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[s~ $1]

[r $0-radio]
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[== 1] [r~ $0-inlet]
| |
[*~ ]
|
[s~ $2]

etc...

Yes... the only thing about the menu over the vradio is that a menu wouldn't take up screen real estate when I didn't need it. I guess I could just put the vradios in a subpatch that would pop up when I clicked it... but then, if that were part of a graph-on-parent abstraction, I would have to open the abstraction's window first, then open the subpatch... huge pain. The goal here is quick and easy switching, for use in selecting different timbres/sounds/etc to use in a playable instrument.

Thanks again so much!

one workaround might be, if you have multiple abstractions, then just use one small vradio with menus, and then configure your abstractions so that clicking on a bang in the graph-on-parent abstraction would send that abstraction's values to the menu, and then that menu would send its value back to the chosen abstraction.