Trouble with Subpatches and Patcher Tab

beatpiet's icon

Hello folks,

I have big problems right now. I have a main patch which contains several subpatches. Now I want to attach the subpatches to the main patch via the "show on Patcher Tab" (top level). Everything is ok at first. But when I close and reopen my main patch everything is confused. The tabs sometimes contain the wrong sub patches. Worse still, if I double click on a sub patch in edit mode, the wrong sub patch opens. If I now want to set up everything correctly again, it does not work because the menu item "show on Patcher Tab" in the patch inspector is grayed out.
Can someone explain this or does someone have similar problems?

Many greetings Peter

beatpiet's icon

here is a sample patch

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

beatpiet's icon
Source Audio's icon

It would have been easier to say it in few words than to upload 400 MB movie.
All patchers that should be tabed in the main (root) patcher also need to be on the main patcher level.
You are creating 3rd patcher inside of second one.
P.S. if you look at help files, they have all patchers in the root patcherwhich itself is hidden on the TAB

beatpiet's icon

yes that's right, in the help patcher it is so.
still, i'm surprised that i have the possibility to set "parent" and "top level". wouldn't make sense if i could only use patches on a second level. and if that's the way you say, shouldn't it be documented somewhere? I could not find anything in this regard.
it looks more like a bug to me.

beatpiet's icon

and besides that everything works fine when creating the tabs. only when i close and re-open the main patch the problems are there. also curious is the fact that after closing and re-opening the patch i can't set the tab parameters anymore because they are greyed out.

Source Audio's icon

I don't know if it is well documented or not.
I use several Max versions on both OS versions
and am used to the fact that not everything works the way one would expect it.
But if one can find the way to fix the problem all is ok for me.
On max 6 for example, as soon as one tries to tab subpatch of allready tabed patcher, that patcher dissapears from the Tab Bar.
It seems that in Max 8 it remains till root patch gets stored - and opened again.

Herr Markant's icon

@beatpiet
did you find a solution? got the same problem today. I had a sub-batcher open as parent tab, and saved the whole patch. now the subpatcher where the bpatcher is in is always marked as parent tab, and i can't change the value, its geyed out.


Tom Law's icon

I just had the same problem, and finally realized I could work around it by just sending a '0' to that "showontab" attrui object.
Still, it's a weird bug.

mattyo's icon

Good trick, Tom! even trickier since if you look up the attributes in the object menu, 'showontob' is greyed out -- you have to create an attrui, _then_ select 'Show on Patcher Tab", and then send a 0...

\M

Source Audio's icon

even for patcher without any inlets

mattyo's icon

And it doesn't hold across saving the patcher.

Source Audio's icon

loadbang does not hold across saving the patcher ?

another joke ?
this works :

an also this

what does not ?

Ernest's icon

Historically, C74 added tabs to patchers for its helpfiles, and documented the tab function for users, but as the helpfiles didn't do tabbing in subpatches, it hasn't been a reliable feature, and as of 8.5.6 still sometimes causes Max to crash when you try to use it. It's been reported at least half a dozen times, and C74's most recent reaction has been to disable comments on version releases, which due to the current user base being almost entirely students is understandable. I find the "tab in parent" works most reliably in 1st-level subpatches and stopped trying to use other variations.

Sebastian Adams's icon

Sorry to wake this thread but I've just encountered this problem in a way where if I select my subpatch through the tabs it shows the most recent version of the sub patch I saved, but if I open it via double clicking this object then it brings up an older version. There's no way this is intended, so certainly a bug (and a mystifying one!)