Copy Compressed in Max 6
I've noticed that when you "Copy Compressed" in Max 6 the first and last lines still read:
-----------begin_max5_patcher-----------
and
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------
and when you post the compressed patch in the forum it reads:
-- Pasted Max 5 Patch, click to expand. --
This is a bit confusing since many Max 6 patches can't be run by Max 5 users.
Okay that's a little confusing as well since the forum automatically retracted my text.
But I'm sure you get the gist of the problem.
I don't think that this should change. The Max 5 reference in that header is to designate basic file format. A Max 6 patch is file-format-compatible with Max 5. The things in the file may not be compatible, but the file format itself is compatible.
I can see how it would be nice to know whether a patch uses Max 6 features, but I wouldn't want the backwards compatibility hampered by declaring patches to be Max 6 patches.
Instead of "I don't think that this should change." how about "How can we change this to retain backward compatibility and communicate which version of Max a patch was created in."?
I can think of two ways. Maybe you can think of a better way.
1) Release Max 5.2 with the ability to "New from Clipboard" files with either type of begin/end lines.
2) Have Max 6 generate "Copy Compressed" with nested formatting (see patch mockup below)
----------begin_max6_patcher-----------
=======begin_max5_patcher========
...
========end_max5_patcher========
-----------end_max6_patcher-----------
(use of "=" instead of "-" simply to keep the forum from retracting the code)
so Max 5 users copy the inner lines and Max 6 users copy all of the lines.
When Max 7 is released add another nest.
This ambiguity has caused confusion and frustration for me and several of my students since the release of Max 6 (beta). See:
Look forward to your thoughts.
This is a file format flag, not a version-specific-features flag.
So what if I make a patch in Max 6, which is completely Max 5 compatible? You've always been able to write a file with Max N+1 that used new features that weren't available to version N. This was true before the file format change. Max 4.x patches could be opened in earlier versions, but they wouldn't necessarily work, if there were newer features used.
Further to Chris' point: it was always possible to Copy Compressed on Max5 with a patch using 3rd Party Objects (or Abstractions, of Javascript, or Java, or whatever). For someone who doesn't have the requisite objects installed, the patch can't instantiate the missing parts.
To that extent, nothing has changed. Hence, nothing ought to change.
It might have been less confusing if the tags surrounding the compressed code had read something like
----------begin-Max5-FORMAT-patcher--------
to emphasize that it's a format thing, not an app version thing. But we can't go back in time to change that now.