Hi there! I'm following the magnificent turorial on synths by obiwannabe (http://www.obiwannabe.co.uk/html/music/6SS/six-simple-synthesisers.html) and I have a problem with canvases.

I'm familiar with the graph-on-parent technique but I don't quite get the point with canvases. I'm actually talking about "Adding GUI components" step in the mentioned tutorial. Code is attached. My questions are:

The whole purpose of canvases is simply to make colored background rectangles? Why am I not able to superpose already existing objects (faders or whatever) on canvases? They stay hidden in the back. However, If I create those objects after the canvas, the appear at the front.

Thanks in advance

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/6SS-111-gui.pd

objects are shown in order of creation.

I'm using cut and paste method. Just select all your GUIs and objects connected to them and do the cut & paste. That way, your new canvas will become "older" than the rest in the patch (see Gromit's post).

nice trick sinewave, is that really all about it? just colored rectangles?

They are just a colored rectangles, but they are very powerful, too. Take a look at the attachment, it is my old abstraction I made as an pd exercise. I am sure there are more useful things you can do with canvases.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/minikey.pd

That was a nice work sinewave with the keyboard! It's funny how you fit small, large toogle buttons under canvases. I guess you must have been really careful with the creation order so that white keys superpose both toggles and the grey canvas. Anyway, it'd be great if you could simply choose that order instead of the copy/paste method to renew some elements.