Cycling 74 » Topic: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Peter Ostry — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:48:05 +0000

I guess I need a plan for this GUI ;-)

I have a line of tabs at the top and want to show different things below them. Straight forward. Tab #1 shows some settings, tab #2 the instrument parameters, tab #3 the effects and so on.

But how do I make this with bpatcher? Really everything in one single bpatcher? This would require a huge “mother patcher”. Is it not possible to load different patches on demand or is there another technique I am not aware of?

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Chris Muir — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:23:16 +0000

I had to deal with this in my “Gyre” program. http://www.xfade.com/Gyre

The tabbed section is made up of a bunch of child patchers that all have the same size presentation area. I include all these in an intermediate patch as bpatchers, with the X dimensions aligned, and the Y dimensions one height apart.

I include the intermediate patch as a bpatcher in the parent patch, and make it the same size as the presentation area of the child patchers. Now I can send the intermediate patcher messages that select the different sections, and the intermediate patch manages the offset messages to thispatcher that bring the different child patchers into focus. The intermediate patcher also enables/disables things as appropriate based on what child patch is in focus.

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Peter Ostry — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:55:43 +0000

If I understand you right you talk about nested bpatchers. On top are the tabs and one bpatcher. This bpatcher contains a patch with several bpatchers. Is this correct? At least I tried and it works.

This is a surprisingly simple solution, I love it. Are there any memory or CPU problems with nested bpatchers, I mean, should I rather avoid to let them talk to each other under the hood?

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Chris Muir — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:29:17 +0000

Yes, that’s what I was trying to say. I haven’t found any performance problems with this implementation.

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Jesse — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:47:28 +0000

Yes, I’ve also done a tabbed interface with nested bpatcher’s and it worked very well, no performance issues.

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

whincop — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:44:39 +0000

you’ve obviously found a very elegant solution, but doesn’t the “even more” subpatcher in the bpatcher help patch demonstrate something useful along these lines?

Re: Tabs and bpatcher – howto?

Roman Thilenius — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:25:42 +0000

if nested bpatchers can be a performance problem really depends on the
content of the bpatchers and on your computer.

it IS definetly a lot slower but you might not see it at all in your situation.

also, building it one by one still does not get rid of the problem that the main
bpatcher will habe lots in and outs .. eventually too lots.

it is one of the exceptions where i tend you use send and receive.

-110