Im sure a little research would explain this, but I just wanted to see if you guys could clear this up.

I am building some recursion structures, and iterations in GEM, and they seem to work best with the vector translations and rotations. So I am using them but I still don't fully understand how they function. The XYZ counterparts are straitforwarard enough.

ARe there any advantages to using the vector translations?

-Evan_

Are there Pd Objects for vector translations? Do you mean a matrix translation? What's the diff?
For the unitiated: Vectors used by graphics software are usually 3-dimensional datatypes which describe location as a coordinate vector(that's the XYZ ), or a euclidean vector: usually represents acceleration, velocity or somesuch. There is sadly no 'vanilla' public vector object in Pd(that I've found), making 'from scratch' particle generators and physics impossible.

I'm no linear algebra ringer, so please correct me if you can.

I'm assuming that the rotation and translation objects in GEM are essentially matrix math objects, affecting the current location vector of the Gl chain (the GEM chain, basically). When you create an instance of [translateXYZ x y z], you are applying a translation matrix:

1 0 0 x
0 1 0 y
0 0 1 z
0 0 1 1

Check it out on wikipedia for all the hairy details.