attributes and "edit" button

danieleghisi

Is there a way to have an attribute modifiable in the inspector with the grey "Edit" button, which makes the usual white text-editing window pop up? Just like for the "Menu Items" attribute for [umenu]...

Thanks,
Daniele

Luigi Castelli

yes there is... use a "text_large" attribute style.

- Luigi

danieleghisi

Thanks Luigi.
It works, but I'm having some troubles to get it right.
With which kind of attributes can I use this edit menu?
Can't I use it with a CLASS_ATTR_SYM_VARSIZE attribute (with comma automatically parsed to be the tokens for cutting symbols)?

Luigi Castelli

well, I think it depends what you are trying to do with it.

I personally haven't used it with CLASS_ATTR_SYM_VARSIZE, but I am not sure your approach is gonna work.
If the user inserts numeric values between commas I don't see how Max could turn them automatically into symbols. You might have to write a custom accessor to do that, but you risk of making things more complicated than they need to be...

A better, more general way might be to use CLASS_ATTR_ATOM_VARSIZE.
You can typecheck the arguments yourself and still parse commas away.

There might be other ideas, but I don't know exactly your scenario, so I can't really give you a definite answer.

Hope this helps anyway...

- Luigi

danieleghisi

Thanks Luigi for your patience.
I'm now trying to define my attribute

        CLASS_ATTR_ATOM_VARSIZE(c, "voicenames", 0, t_roll, voicenames_as_atomlist, num_voices, 10);
        CLASS_ATTR_STYLE_LABEL(c,"voicenames",0,"text_large","Voice Names");
        CLASS_ATTR_DEFAULT_SAVE_PAINT(c,"voicenames",0,"");
        CLASS_ATTR_ACCESSORS(c, "voicenames", (method)NULL, (method)myobj_setattr_voicenames);

and fill my "voicenames_as_atomlist" (t_atom* [10]) in the accessor with something like

    for (i = 0; i < ac; i++) {
        if (atom_gettype(av+i) == A_SYM)
            atom_setsym(x->voicenames_as_atomlist[i], atom_getsym(av+i));
        else if (atom_gettype(av+i) == A_LONG)
            atom_setlong(x->voicenames_as_atomlist[i], atom_getlong(av+i));
[etc.]
    }

Yet, although everything seems to be correct with the accessor (and the "voicenames_as_atomlist" seems correctly filled), I only see a bunch of ... in my white edit window.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing some basic step of the thing...

Luigi Castelli

Assuming you are writing a UI object, I can see that you are not initializing your voicenames_as_atomlist[] array.
You have an array of 10 atoms, so you could do something like the following to solve your problem:

CLASS_ATTR_DEFAULT_SAVE_PAINT(c,"voicenames",0,"0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0");

or if you prefer:

CLASS_ATTR_DEFAULT_SAVE_PAINT(c,"voicenames",0,"         ");

The above will not work in a standard - not UI - object and you will have to initialize your atom list in the new method.

Cheers.

- Luigi

danieleghisi

Hello Luigi, thanks again.
Actually, I had it initialized in the new method. Plus, even if I changed all things by hands in the inspector, I always ended up with lists.

I switched back to standard SYM_ARRAYS (I feel at home!) and everything works fine. No need of comma parsing and all... Only I have no white editor! :-)

$Adam

Hi Daniele,

I didn't try it personally, but did you consider using atom_setparse() in your accessor?

Best,
Ádám

danieleghisi

Uhm... thanks Ádám, but I don't completely understand: does it mean that my "text_large" attribute should be a long single string, which then should be only parsed internally?

Meanwhile I have solved the issue with the CLASS_ATTR_ATOM_VARSIZE (just a rough programming error).
I was just wondering if there were a way to parse automatically a list of atoms with respect to commas (as the umenu object does). As far as I know atom_setparse() parses an unique string into a sequence of atoms, isn't it?

$Adam

Yes, that was my idea (the 'using a single large string and then parse its content internally'). But as I told, I didn't test it, so I can't tell whether this was more efficient or not than the use of CLASS_ATTR_ATOM_VARSIZE...