This array of squares is allegedly from Reaktor 6, and they're xy controls. The lower left-justified white rectangle denotes where in the grey square the control point is.

How would you recommend I approach making something like this? I'd like the enclosing square to be GOP from an abstraction. I made something that gets the xy coordinates using else/canvas.mouse, but it doesn't display what the current xy value is. Do I have to try to learn data structures (again)?

PS: the actual sq/rectangle colors don't matter to me. I don't see an easy way to paint the GOP window some other color than white.

maybe it's not a bad idea to check out data structures again after they received some updates with the latest pd versions! - but in this case, cnv objects with else/canvas.mouse seem to work reasonably well.

not sure this is the most elegant way - but it works:

here's the patch: reaktor-control.zip

@ben.wes Woah! Look how similar my patch is and how little is missing:

I'm really more amazed by the missing part because it really drives home what I don't know! Wait, that didn't come out right. I mean it's like I'm standing next to the Empire State Building asking people "hey, where's is the Empire State Building?"

I can't find (in 10 minutes of happy hour searching) where either the pos or vis_size messages are documented, so here are my guesses from looking at your code:

• sending to $0-cnv sends messages to the containing canvas
• the visibility window just happens to have the exact same color scheme as Reaktor?!!! Unbelievable coincidence.
• the visibility window is anchored relative to its upper left corner, so that's why you did the pos message that way
• and the size of the window extends down and to the right of the visibility window anchor

How did I do, professor? All kidding aside, thanks so much.

@jameslo said:

Woah! Look how similar my patch is and how little is missing:

haha, that really seems quite similar - and elegant.

actually, cnv-help.pd explains everything quite well! see the pd properties and pd position subpatches.
i slightly changed the color for the background cnv. so that's not completely coincidental, i admit.

@ben.wes I like your mouse click logic + clipping better because you can drag outside the control to make things maximum or minimum.

For anyone else is trying to understand your patch, I want to correct my faulty explanation. Firstly, there are 2 canvases in the GOP area, one is the grey background that fills it, and one is a smaller white foreground. This latter one receives messages sent to $0-cnv, not the silly thing I wrote before, and its configured size has to be 1 so that vis_size can go to 1.