nick rothwell | project cassiel

It's a while since I used Javascript in Max but I'm back into 

evaluating it (vs. my Jython/Java subsystem).

Javascript is still deferred to low priority by default; I played 

around with "immediate" a while ago (Max 4.x) and found it to be 

unstable; has there been any improvement here? (Someone at C'74 

confirmed that there were issues, but of course I can't find the email 

It's not totally clear to be what "immediate" does: can I assume that 

it's simply an annotation which causes incoming messages from the Max 

world to not be deferred? So that: calls into other functions from the 

immediate function are also at interrupt, and calls into an immediate 

function from the low-priority world ignore the annotation and stay at 

Although "immediate" puts JS into a multithreaded environment (as 

does, perhaps, the Task feature) I don't see any machinery for 

synchronisation or for enforcing critical sections. The Mozilla docs 

don't mention anything either: am I missing something?

Are Tasks created in a function called via "immediate" also run in the 

How are Tasks scheduled: can they actually cause multiple threads of 

control within a JS environment, or are they more cooperative than 

that (for example, being invoked only when no Max message thread is 

It's a while since I used Javascript in Max but I'm back into  
evaluating it (vs. my Jython/Java subsystem).

Javascript is still deferred to low priority by default; I played  
around with "immediate" a while ago (Max 4.x) and found it to be  
unstable; has there been any improvement here? (Someone at C'74  
confirmed that there were issues, but of course I can't find the email  
at the moment.)

It's not totally clear to be what "immediate" does: can I assume that  
it's simply an annotation which causes incoming messages from the Max  
world to not be deferred? So that: calls into other functions from the  
immediate function are also at interrupt, and calls into an immediate  
function from the low-priority world ignore the annotation and stay at  
low priority.

Although "immediate" puts JS into a multithreaded environment (as  
does, perhaps, the Task feature) I don't see any machinery for  
synchronisation or for enforcing critical sections. The Mozilla docs  
don't mention anything either: am I missing something?

Are Tasks created in a function called via "immediate" also run in the  
scheduler thread?

How are Tasks scheduled: can they actually cause multiple threads of  
control within a JS environment, or are they more cooperative than  
that (for example, being invoked only when no Max message thread is  
active in the JS)?

Nick Rothwell / Cassiel.com Limited
www.cassiel.com
www.myspace.com/cassieldotcom
www.last.fm/music/cassiel
www.reverbnation.com/cassiel
www.linkedin.com/in/cassiel
www.loadbang.net


Interrupt/immediate and synchronisation