Re: comp.agents? (was: Dylan Agents)

Nathaniel Borenstein (nsb@nsb.fv.com)
Fri, 26 Aug 1994 08:57:40 -0400 (EDT)


Excerpts from www-talk: 26-Aug-94 comp.agents? (was: Dylan Ag.. "Steven
D. Majewski"@elv (5362)

> However, I'm not convinced that the safe-tcl method would work well
> for other, more general types of agents. ( I haven't studied it in
> depth, but there does seem to be too much dependence on pop up
> warning dialogs, etc., but maybe that's not as essential to the core
> facility as it looks. )

Not to pick nits, but there's actually NO dependence on such things at
all. One of the innovations of Safe-Tcl was parameterizing the user
interface capability of the language into packages known as "interface
styles". You can have a graphical interface style (the one you
mention), a terminal-oriented style, or (for non-interactive settings)
none at all. The interface styles may be queried at run time, so that a
running program may evaluate the available user interaction facilities
and decide how best to use whatever facilities happen to be present. --
Nathaniel