I don't make that many so much convoluted patches
I guess both [bezier] and [swatch] were a kind of inspiration, and concentrated problem-solving (each was done in around 1 day). Actually it's not that different from other people who use a clock of some kind to update a gui - since [struct] outputs the operation+pointer, that serves as clock (which is an advantage to "normal" Pd).
Yes, reading Miller's original paper on Pd, this was created (mainly?) to add data structures to Max. All these years gone by, and not so much has been done - new features come very slowly, one or two in each release.
I use data structures some times when I need an interaction between a dynamic graphic + user actions. But still, they're quite basic.
I repeat again, Pd would gain a lot if someone would port ftm to Pd (or continue IOhannes' work on it). This would give us a very much more potent and elegant data structures framework.
Until then, we'll have to make due with what we have. It works nevertheless, but it is quite slow to program.
João