Re: Program# release 2.1

Guys,

Thanks for the information.

Rich's comment (in Mehri's email) preempt many of the thoughts I've been
having whilst re-writing Program# regarding the path part of the AIML
standard: "One idea that's been discussed over the years is to
generalize the <pattern, that, topic> triple into a botmaster-defined
infinite number of pattern-contexts, which could include concepts such
as bot name, mood, state, personality and so on. There is in principle
no reason the botmaster should not be allowed to redefine the order as
well as the number of levels matching."

In the new year I'll create an "experimental" branch to act as a
playground for new ideas and non-AIML features and will definitely be
changing the way the "path" works (among other things).

With regard to path "order": Having read Kim's comments on "shadowed"
categories arising from the possibility of catch-alls in topics I think
"correctness" definitely trumps performance and memory. Program# will
therefore revert to the original <path,that,topic> triple of the
original standard.

Mehri, I am aware of the Program D test cases but have not had time
(yet) to include them in Program#. I suspect my library won't pass
because of white-space issues and the way it handles non-aiml tags, but
this can be changed. I've got pretty comprehensive tests for get, set
and condition tags but I think tests to exercise my code that originated
from someone else would be an excellent resource. I'd also be interested
in collaborating in an ACID2 like test
(http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/) for AIML interpreters.

This brings me to the question of the AIML standard: what exactly is the
status of moving it from draft to ???? Would it mean submitting the
standard to ASCII / W3C or whoever for some sort of seal of approval?
(You can tell I've never been involved in such a process). Is discussion
/ development of the standard still ongoing or has it stalled? (Why?)
What are people's thoughts on this?

Finally, the web-service I wrote was literally banged out in an
afternoon. It is *ONLY* meant to be an example of how one *MIGHT* do it.
A proof of concept as it were. It needs a lot more thought putting into
it before it could be used IRL. If programD already has a web-service
worked out with an appropriate WSDL then I think some effort should be
put in to thrashing out a standard web-based API. Again, I'd certainly
be willing to be involved with this.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement and I'd be interested to hear your
thoughts.

Regards,

Nicholas.
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