It seems there a lot of views and few responses on this forum.

I wrote an external, debugged, and it runs like a champ on my main PC. I copied over to another pc (same OS), and PD can't load the external on this second PC.

It's not a path issue, as I put the dll in the \extra dir, and other objects from that dir are loading fine. THere is only one copy of the dll, on the path, so not duplicated.

I'm wondering if there is anything required other than the dll? It was made in Visual Studio, using an SDK for a heatracker. But shouldn't the dll be all that is required in any case?

I have compiled the helloworld example in VS2005 and it runs fine in PD. When I try to change the name, it still compiles fine but crashes PD!

I created a new VS project with a new name (VCtracker) and imported the m_pd.h header and also the helloworld.c file (renamed to VCtracker.c). I simply replaced "helloworld" with "VCtracker" in the text of the c file, and also the linker export command to

/export:VCtrack_setup

I have checked and checked and can't find any reason why it should not work, all I did was change the name! What gives?

Is there any example code or help available to compile a Helloworld external using C++, instead of C ?? I have the C version compiling. I have some existing code in C++ that I would like to make an external out of, by basically inserting it into the existing Helloworld app.

An alternative would be using flext, but then another thing to set up and figure out.

An example code wolud be great!

Hi, I have a patch where I'm writing one line of text to a .txt file and want to read it, both using [textfile]. Seems simple enough, but I can in no way shape or form get output once I have written the txt file (though the helppfile example works fine). The file IS there in the directory; in fact, sending a [print( message causes the string from the txt file to be sent to the console just fine. So, it IS in the qlist. I just CAN"T get it out of the textfile output in the normal way (bang). I can use the [print( and see it at the console, but the message it sends out does not register anything on my debug-o-meter (not even undefined!):

|
|
[route bang float symbol list anything ]
| | | | | | |
[o] [o] [o] [o] [o] [o] [o]

So, this is mystifying, and so far useless.

Hints welcom...

Hi, I want to compare the output of wmangle to "hidden 1" to determine if a particular window is hidden.

So, if queried, wmangle will send a message "hidden 1" or "hidden 0", depending on whether the window in question (already specified to wmangle) is hidden or not, and I just want to generate a bang in the first case only. I spent some several hours trying to do this seemingly simple task but could not find a way. I tried various combination of route, trigger, strcmp, and some other ideas, but nothing seems to work. I know this is a newbie question, but any suggestions welcome.

Hi, I would like to redirect the pd console messages such that I can display them in gripd (an external GUI for pd), then I can run pd with -nogui and just have the gripd GUI running. HOwever, I want to be able to see system messages in the gripd GUI. If I could just redirect the messages to somewhere in the pd patch, I could send it to the gripd GUI no problem.
Any suggestions...?

You mean like this one?
Yes, I have been all over the internet. Like I said, I eventually solved my problem using MinGW. I don't know why it worked and VS had a problem. Probably my own lack of experience had something to do with it.

I also ended up compiling in MinGW, with eventual success and not too much trouble. I had to figure out how to do a build file (most of my limited experience is in VS), but not too hard.

Dunno if this thread is completely dead, but:

I followed instructions int his thread and got the helloworld to build in VS2005. I compiled in debug mode. The helloworld.dll loads and works in PD. BUT, if I switch to relese mode, pd crashes every time. I have been fiddling aournd with some of the settings and it seems that the "Generate Debug info" is the culprit.

Any help appreciated, I'm going nuts here.

Thanks, I also found out that if you switch the "0" to "A_NULL" in

helloworld_class = class_new(gensym("helloworld"),
(t_newmethod)helloworld_new,
0, sizeof(t_helloworld),
CLASS_DEFAULT, 0);

it compiles. I'm not sure if this will work for other than a helloworld external in general though.

...actually I see that in your example too, which I thought I had tried already! Hmmm. As for the EXTERN, I think mine is already setup in the compiler options, under linker ("/export:helloworld_setup ").

Never mind, I found out I had to rewind!

As per some corollary of Murphy's law, trying it again after someone else suggested it seemed to now work. Thanks.

I did notice that wmangle outputted an extra space (?) at the end of the output message, which BTW you wouldn't notice by looking at the console print message. It seems that a message that looked like one element was actually two. I confirmed using the "zl len" object. Hmm....

Hi, I tried something like this, but will try again. BTW, where is there a reference explaining the formatting for patches in the forums? i.e. what does [xyz( mean?

@arif said:

You should be able to forward most, if not all system messages, but it requires a bit of research and some filtering of messages that you don't want sent through.

Go to your help browser and go to:

manuals/pd-msg/

There's loads of info in there

Hi, I did look there but don't see anything that will do it. In my several hours of research (still a Noob-a-saurus though), I saw tantalizing hints about how the GUI module of pd communicates to the computational module via localhost, but dont know which port. I see 3000 or 3001 mentioned in many of the examples. I tried various things like "receive pd" and "netreceive 3000", and at one point I was able to see a series of "ping" statements directed to the console (can't remember which how I did itright now), so I thought I was getting warm, but couldn't get any further.