Re: Another approach to agent architecture [ was Re: agents .. ]

Laurence Lundblade (lgl@csgrad.cs.vt.edu)
Thu, 13 Apr 1995 00:41:41 +0500

I've been following the recent discussion with interest here! It seems to
me what may be critical to the success of safe-tcl is going to be the
"killer app" rather than the language wars. Ultimately people use what
works and what fills the bill at the moment (witness DOS). Maybe I've
missed it, but I've hardly seen any safe-tcl applications at all. How
about a listserve or majordomo based on safe-tcl as a possibly something
people might use right away. It could also include some groupware sorts
of things like voting, easy to use community archives and such.

Also, I didn't see any mention of Telescript in relation to ALF. I know
it's propriertary and so far bundled with MagicCap, but from what I know
it has a lot of features that safe-tcl doesn't have. For example, the
meet and go operations and the directory services all that allow agents to
know where to go and do things. It seems these can either be part of ALF
in which case safe-tcl has a ways to go, or they have to be layered on top
of ALF in another standard. They seem important to agent-based products
to me.

Last, the Netscape-Adobe deal that puts an Acrobat viewer in the Netscape
browser piqued my interest. PostScript is a full language that could do
agent stuff. Anyone think this is on Adobe's agenda? They could have
software to run "PostScript Agents" on many peoples desk in a matter of
months!

Laurence Lundblade
LGL@CSGrad.CS.VT.EDU (and a few other addresses)
http://oneworld.wa.com/laurence/home.html
Virginia Tech CS -- Blacksburg, Virginia, US -- 703-552-2537