Hey,
I want to build a little "patch-analyser" (in pd since I don't know about "deeper" programming in C and so on). Mainly because I dislike the [trigger]'s & I just want to avoid using them.
It never ever happend that the order of objects being computed suddenly changed without triggers, but triggers slow things down alot. <- Just measure the "[realtime]" of banging e.g. "[until]" 100000 with and without [trigger]'s...
So as far as I can see there "technically" is no need for those triggers.
The order is saved within the save-file!
They just help visualizing the processing-structure! Some people consider using triggers as rather clean which may be true for looking at the patch but not for processing it.

..in short: without trigger's I build patches from right to left (because right inlets are the passive ones most of the time) so that most right objects (the ones you placed first) are computed at first!

It's different with "audio"-data (the vectors). There an object's output only is computed after all inlets have received data... (this makes sense sice each element of one vector can "interact" with each element of another vector & they are connected to the sample-rate)

Anyways, not using triggers but trying to keep a clear visual structure may "uglify" the appearance of the patch sometimes, or just doesn't work (more than one active inlet and so on..)

...Sooo the easiest way to keep the information about the order visualized is "on demand".
Imagine this: You select an object (msg etc.) and its outgoing (and incomming) connections get numbers written next to them according to the order they are processed.
This can be programed in pd itself since pd is capable of creating object's via text (msg) & saves the processing-order with the save-file (hopefully even before)
Next step would be beeing able to change the processing-order just by changing those numbers (helps alot with multiple connections & even [trigger]'s are not comfortable in this situation..) ... but that's far future...
What do you think of this?!
-Or an switchable extra graphical-layer containing those numbers for all objects (at once)... I gonna upload a patch that demonstrates this soon...

Now here comes the important part (still reading?! ):
Does anyone know if and where data (e.g. a pre-savefile) is stored as long as it's not saved???!!! I ask because I managed to analyse the text of save-files somehow, just by reading out the file with some textread-objects in pd... but I don't know where to find data of unsaved patches. (and it's a little annoying to save your patch every time just to analyse the connection-order)
Aaand is there a method to identify a selected object?? (For now I use a unique message that is sent to the object I want to "select" and then trace that connection in the save-file)

Actually I found something like this (just have to look where that was..), but actually it didn't work since it was made for earlier versions and it had to change some pd-dll's (yep -Windows..).
As usual don't hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong.
And please respond even if you just like or dislike this idea...
Bye Flipp