Re: [chuck-users] ChucK Language Features

Thanks much for the feedback! I've figured out the UGen subclassing and it was a relief to hear it working :) I was using an `output` method before. The release of ChucK I am using is `1.2.1.4-beta-1` which is an OS X build from a link Spencer posted not too long ago. I will look through the type system, thanks for the advice. ---------- Colin Sullivan On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:23 AM, Kassen wrote:

On 30/11/2011, Colin Sullivan wrote:

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Hello all,

Hey Colin!

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I have started to build a compositional framework in ChucK and have come across a few language features that seem to be unsupported:

- For the types of inheritance structures I am thinking about, it would be incredibly useful if I was able to call a parent class's method from within a child class using something like the `super` keyword.

You are right. That kind of advanced class/type usage is simply a bit underdeveloped.

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- It would also be really awesome if I could pass a "type" as a parameter.

I've thought about that too, though I also have a suspicion that with more advanced type&class functions we might not even need that. I'm not sure, I'll defer to the real theoretical experts.

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- Not crucial at all, but it would be convenient if subclassing a `UGen` allowed you to use the chuck operator on instances of your class just like other ugens, i.e. `MyPiano p => dac`.

Yes. That, IMHO *is* critical. On the bright side; some work on that has been done as that mysteriously started working a while ago. I heard gossip that more work is being done right now on custom and user build UGens that should go in the next version.

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I am interested to know if there has been work on these features since

the

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release I am running, and if so where I can go about acquiring a more recent build.

Well, that depends on what release you are running :-). The most recent regular version is up on the site as a binary for OSX and Windows and as source for Linux. If you need the latest there is the SVN repository from which you can build your own. I can look up the location if you'd like. I am not aware of any changes to the class system there though. Worst case is you are running that .deb package, last time I checked that was quite out of date and you'd receive a lot of benefits from opdating by compiling your own (not so hard and downright easy after the first time).

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If there has not been any development on these features, I would be interested in getting to know the problems a bit more and determining if I can contribute to their development. Are any of these issues inherently difficult due to an aspect of ChucK's implementation? Let me know if I can clarify at all.

I think I'd personally advocate fixes for the bugs in the type system before new features there. Bug hunting has been done there, I think the community has found and documented most of the bad things there. As I see it we now need somebody who really knows that structure to take a look at it. This practically depends on Ge having spare time which seems to be a bit of a problem. That's probably a problem for Ge first and fore-most.. :-/

As for the UGens, I heard very nice gossip.

More in general; if you have things you can't accomplish due to a lack of features you can always ask for help working around that. ChucK *is* a bit of a simple language (which is nice too, in many ways!) but you can typically accomplish what you need, even if it might not look very elegant by -say- C++ standards.

Hope that helps a bit. Kas. _______________________________________________ chuck-users mailing list chuck-users@lists.cs.princeton.edu https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users