I think, it's far from perfect, but i tried to build something similar some years ago. However, maybe it's a starting point.... quadropan.pd

Hmm, i didn't encounter problems with that external. but i kicked out the whole compression unit, just to confirm, that it's the reason for crashing, but still it crashes with the same "Signal 4" error. On my notebook i have no problems running the patch.

Since i recently updated my linux mint 19.3 tricia distro on my pc, this patch crashes pd immediately on startup with error message "Signal 4" (tried with pd 0.50.0 and 0.51.4). On my notebook with the same distro but not updated for a while, it still works fine with pd 0.50.0.
Any ideas on the error message "Signal 4"?

@whale-av thanks david, that should work. the downside though is, that, if you put this patch inside an abstraction or a subpatch, which itself is in GOP mode, you need to put the paint subpatch into the gop area too, because otherwise the data won't be displayed. but that's not such a big deal in my case, since you can adjust the GOP x and y values and size of the paint subpatch, so that it's just a slim stripe right under the displayed array.

mhh, strange - dosn't work for me as array element....
array_test_-x-flag.pd

edit: as a workaround, i could declare "float y" in the array template and use the "-y" flag (with some imaginary variable assigned) in the [plot] object, but you would still see the arrows when hovering over the array elements....

is there a way to surpress mouse actions in data structure arrays? i am afraid, the answer is no, but i thought, maybe one of the DS wizards here in the forum knows a way to achieve this.

just to clarify, i want to use a square (filledpolygon) as array-element to build a background for each cell of a step-sequencer. since it should only be a design element, it should not get any mouse events. adding the -x flag to the filledpolygon doesn't do the trick and [plot] doesn't accept that flag (respectivley, it has another function there).

thanks in advance!

@Pimp_me
just, because couldn't let it be...

and here the patch: find_list_val.pd

@Pimp_me i'm pretty sure, that someone already built an abstraction, that solves such tasks in an elegant way - however, i don#t exactly know! i just tinkered around by trial and error and i have to confess, i feel a bit ashamed about such an akward patch. but maybe it could be a starting point. i'm sure, this can be refined or build another way. at the moment, it only works, as long the integrals a below than 10.
find_list_val.pd
basically, i convert the symbol into a list, break it up into it's single elements and look for the indicies of the colons. then i route these indicies to [list split] units, wich extract the first element after each colon.

@ingox @Jona @whale-av @Balwyn People, you are really amazing! All these hints are very useful! in this particular case, @ingox / @whale-av 's tip regarding [receive pd] is a solution, which works pretty well and makes [mousestate] unnecessary! however, a big thanks to each of you!

@whale-av hey, that's quite nice! i got an error message, although it seems to work though.

UNHANDLED ERROR: extra characters after close-quote
    while executing
"pdtk_post "loaded: experimental mouse plugin
"`"
    ("uplevel" body line 17)
    invoked from within
"uplevel #0 $tclcode"
FAILED TO LOAD /home/toxonic/.local/lib/pd/extra/focused_mouse-plugin.tcl
-----------

EDIT: found the buck, there were some " ``` " signs at the end of the code.

after restarting pd (not the patch) it spits out a lot of error messages,: mouse recieve: no such object..
anyway, thanks for the idea!