Gary Lee Nelson

My latest favorite object is textedit. It has helped me solve several small

problems in a project I am working on. However, it seems to have the same

annoying behavior that has persisted in messages. When I type text into

textedit I include returns for separating lines. When I reload a patch the

text is there but without the line formatting. Any chance this can be fixed

My latest favorite object is textedit.  It has helped me solve several small
problems in a project I am working on.  However, it seems to have the same
annoying behavior that has persisted in messages.  When I type text into
textedit I include returns for separating lines.  When I reload a patch the
text is there but without the line formatting.  Any chance this can be fixed
in 5.0.

Cheers
Gary Lee Nelson
Oberlin College
www.timara.oberlin.edu/GaryLeeNelson

textedit-formatting-issue

I understand that the behavior is annoying, but whitespace is 

whitespace. To "fix" that is to make Max inconsistent, isn't it?-}

Have you tried escaping the CR with a backslash? No guarantees, but 

it might work (at least for one save cycle).

Perhaps a "2-byte compatible" mode for textedit might help, or some 

other option to suppress standard message parsing. Inconsistency is 

less inconsistent when it is chosen by a deliberate user option.

On 10-Jan-2007, at 12:14, Gary Lee Nelson wrote:

> My latest favorite object is textedit. It has helped me solve 

> problems in a project I am working on. However, it seems to have 

> annoying behavior that has persisted in messages. When I type text 

> textedit I include returns for separating lines. When I reload a 

> text is there but without the line formatting. Any chance this can 

Peter Castine +--> Litter Power & Litter Bundle for Jitter

Interface Building for |home | chez nous|

Max/MSP Extremely cool |bei uns | i nostri|

I understand that the behavior is annoying, but whitespace is  
whitespace. To "fix" that is to make Max inconsistent, isn't it?-}

Have you tried escaping the CR with a backslash? No guarantees, but  
it might work (at least for one save cycle).

Perhaps a "2-byte compatible" mode for textedit might help, or some  
other option to suppress standard message parsing. Inconsistency is  
less inconsistent when it is chosen by a deliberate user option.

> My latest favorite object is textedit.  It has helped me solve  
> several small
> problems in a project I am working on.  However, it seems to have  
> the same
> annoying behavior that has persisted in messages.  When I type text  
> into
> textedit I include returns for separating lines.  When I reload a  
> patch the
> text is there but without the line formatting.  Any chance this can  
> be fixed
> in 5.0.
>
> Cheers
> Gary Lee Nelson
> Oberlin College
> www.timara.oberlin.edu/GaryLeeNelson
>
>

--------------    http://www.bek.no/~pcastine/Litter/    -------------
Peter Castine             +--> Litter Power & Litter Bundle for Jitter
                                Universal Binaries on the way
iCE:  Sequencing,  Recording &
       Interface  Building  for                   |home    | chez nous|
       Max/MSP   Extremely cool                   |bei uns |  i nostri|
       http://www.dspaudio.com/                   http://www.castine.de

> When I type text into textedit I include returns for separating 

> lines. When I reload a patch the text is there but without the line 

> formatting. Any chance this can be fixed in 5.0.

With textedit I guess its related to the way you store it. pattr will 

deal with whitespace like other objects as well: whitespace is 

whitespace (return, space, many spaces/returns...) and any whitespace is 

Gary Lee Nelson wrote:
> When I type text into textedit I include returns for separating 
> lines.  When I reload a patch the text is there but without the line 
> formatting.  Any chance this can be fixed in 5.0.

With textedit I guess its related to the way you store it. pattr will 
deal with whitespace like other objects as well: whitespace is 
whitespace (return, space, many spaces/returns...) and any whitespace is 
written back as - a single space...

-- 
Stefan Tiedje------------x-------
--_____-----------|--------------
--(_|_ ----|-----|-----()-------
-- _|_)----|-----()--------------
----------()--------www.ccmix.com


I would like to report some other "curious" behaviour involving textedit and backslash characters (which i need to regexp stuff).

When i save a patch with a textedit object in containing a string with a backslash in it, when i reload it the backslash has gone and quote marks have appeared.

(i see the backslash is correctly translated into double backslash so it looks like it's just the display bit that's - um... odd)

Using Max 4.6.2 on Intel, with thanks in advance

> I would like to report some other "curious" behaviour involving 

> textedit and backslash characters (which i need to regexp stuff).

This, too, is fairly expected once you have a grip on how Max parses 

Max has never been a text processor. Max has always been a symbol 

However, it is increasingly obvious that more and more people have a 

need for non-parsed text handling in Max, at least with certain 

objects. It would probably be quite useful for the textedit object 

(and maybe a few others) to have an optional capability to supress 

There was a 3rd party attempt at this a while back which seems to 

have been forgotten. I have no idea if any kind of "don't parse this 

text" mode is on the cards for some future vesion of Max, but it 

could help some people in some circumstances.

[A reminder: we have been asked to refrain from asking "will feature 

X be added in Max 5," so please don't and I'm trying not to.]

> I would like to report some other "curious" behaviour involving  
> textedit and backslash characters (which i need to regexp stuff).

This, too, is fairly expected once you have a grip on how Max parses  
symbols.

Max has never been a text processor. Max has always been a symbol  
parser.

However, it is increasingly obvious that more and more people have a  
need for non-parsed text handling in Max, at least with certain  
objects. It would probably be quite useful for the textedit object  
(and maybe a few others) to have an optional capability to supress  
parsing of text into symbols.

There was a 3rd party attempt at this a while back which seems to  
have been forgotten. I have no idea if any kind of "don't parse this  
text" mode is on the cards for some future vesion of Max, but it  
could help some people in some circumstances.

[A reminder: we have been asked to refrain from asking "will feature  
X be added in Max 5," so please don't and I'm trying not to.]

> [A reminder: we have been asked to refrain from asking "will feature X 

> be added in Max 5," so please don't and I'm trying not to.]

But we have been also encouraged to tell "I'd like this ___ feature to 

show up in Max 5.0" And this for sure is recognized...

We just should not expect that any feature will show up, and any attempt 

to force C74 to include something which is really "essential" (out of a 

personal perspective) would probably not be too helpful either...

Peter Castine wrote:
> [A reminder: we have been asked to refrain from asking "will feature  X 
> be added in Max 5," so please don't and I'm trying not to.]

But we have been also encouraged to tell "I'd like this ___ feature to 
show up in Max 5.0" And this for sure is recognized...
We just should not expect that any feature will show up, and any attempt 
to force C74 to include something which is really "essential" (out of a 
personal perspective) would probably not be too helpful either...

Thanks for everyone's replies - it's always been a thing i've wrestled with (since Max 3.something) - as an Old School Hacker (Z80 assembler onwards) i know everything in a computer is really an array of bytes, often conveniently arranged into smaller arrays of chars, known as strings which we use as the building blocks bit i seem to spend the majority of my Max development time trying to pass "strings" about without Max changing them without my knowing (or getting events to propagate in a predictable way - but that's another story) - these are sort of essentials really for me, but i still find the wonders Max can do outweighs these "trivial" concerns and am looking forward to getting on to the exciting multi-media bits of the current project!

I was unsure if this is allowed after the previous comments - but "in Max 5 i strongly vote for a String object" to be added to the (no doubt humorously lengthy) wish-list. (ok, and every object should have an "input causes output" switch somewhere ;)

Cheers, (btw, i've decided that "_B_" will be converted into a backslash, so sorted!)

hey, just reviving this thread from 10 years ago: 

is there a way to save a textedit with the "parameter mode enable" option (in a Max For Live device) and keep its formatting?

I'm doing todo lists in Live projects like: 

but when the Live project is reloaded, it appears like: 

hey, just reviving this thread from 10 years ago: 
is there a way to save a textedit with the "parameter mode enable" option (in a Max For Live device) and keep its formatting? 

I'm doing todo lists in Live projects like: 
1/ todo 1
2/ todo 2
3/ todo 3 
...
but when the Live project is reloaded, it appears like: 
1/ todo1 2/ todo 2 3/ todo 3 ...

Textedit formatting issue