Re: [chuck-users] Latest on subclassing UGen within ChucK?

22 Feb 2013

      Chris Harris  wrote:
...
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:55 AM, Kassen  wrote:
...
...
If this sort of subclasses can't work, a nice improvement would be for
ChucK to provide an error here. Is there any legitimate reason to
subclass a UGen in ChucK language? If not, attempting to do so should
generate a compile error. Alternatively, maybe trying to chuck a
non-C++ Ugen subclass into another Ugen (and especially into dac)
should throw a runtime error.
As I see things there are valid reasons to want this and wanting to
extend UGen or a particular type of UGen makes sense, both
syntactically and as a way of working with sound.
While it is not a "error" I could this see being grounds for a
"warning" that points the user towards ChuGins. For me a "error" is
going too far; these are classes and classes can be extended, while
the end result is not what we'd intuitively want there is no error on
the syntax level as such, I feel. I can see how this might be grounds
for debate though.
Agree that you might want to be able to extend a particular UGen. For
example, something like this might be useful for something or other:
class MyCosine extends SinOsc
{
    1 => int timesPlayed;
fun void increment()
    {
        1 +=> timesPlayed;
    }
}
You can do something similar with

class MyCosine extends Chugen
{
  SinOsc _osc => blackhole;
  1 => int timesPlayed;

  fun void increment()
  {
    1 +=> timesPlayed;
  }

  fun float tick(float in)
  {
    return _osc.last();
  }

  fun float gain()
  {
    return _osc.gain();
  }

  fun void gain(float gain)
  {
    gain => _osc.gain();
  }

  ...etc.
}

but of course MyCosine would not be an instance of UGen.
...
And clearly you should also be able to have a variable of type UGen,
that could hold any concrete ugen.
I think if we were handling this sort of situation in Java, then UGen
would be an abstract class; you can't instantiate it, only subclasses
that actually implement certain critical methods. And you can't
actually write the relevant methods in the ChucK language, so
attempting to extend a UGen in ChucK would fail. Of course, that would
require abstract classes, which may not be worth adding for for that.
...
I recommend a mail to the list over staring at things for hours.
Oh, you must mean the dev list? I was wondering if I was getting too
technical here anyway.
Too technical for this mailing list?  Not possible.  :)

   michael

Re: [chuck-users] Latest on subclassing UGen within ChucK?

Michael Heuer