The Collective editor window includes a script area and a number of buttons
that you use when creating a collective. The script
contains a list of files to include in the collective. The first entry in the script — open thispatcher —
is added for you. This tells the collective to include the patcher that was the topmost window when the collective editor was opened. The open keyword means that the patcher will be opened when the collective file is opened.
Any Max objects or abstractions used in the patch
be included automatically in the collective, so you won’t need to
add them. Certain Max objects, such as
js and
fpic, will automatically
copy files they use into the collective for you (the
js object copies its script file, but not files the script uses).
A toplevel patcher window opens when the collective opens. You can have more than one toplevel patcher (you need at least one, however).
If there are other files used by a toplevel patcher in the collective, you may need to add them explicitly in the following cases:
If you have an entire folder of data files you want to include, you can include all the files at once.
Editing a collective script to include a large number of files and folders can be time consuming. To avoid repeating the process, you can save a
collective build script.