[alicebot-archcomm] [proposal] <get pattern=

[Kim Sullivan]

>
> > After reading your proposal more closely, I think I
> > completely missed your
> > point. I'll try again in the next post.
>
> Oh, please, where is your next post?? :-)  (I fear I have greatly
> frustrated Kim with my repeated Godzilla-like blunders through CVS :-) )

It should be just next to that one... I wrote them in sucession but since
I'm not permanently connected, they got sent at once. It starts with the
words 'second try'. (If it got lost, I'll gladly  resend it).
  To sum it up: I tried to skip over the philosophycal (sp?) issues to the
more practical ones. I think that while this may indeed be an interesting
approach, it would be too resource intensive. It requires to save the state
of all variables each time a category was activated in time. Rich could
probably supply some numbers about how many categories a single client
activates on average, but you would have to store about (let's say) 5000
states (variables, stars, thatstars, topicstars, processed and unprocessed
templates, inputs...). Let's say that you need 1 Kb to store the state of
one category activation. (unless you're using a dif-compression, which may
be quite complicated to implement - imagine having to reconstruct 500
states, or are actaully reconstructing the whole dialog, which may take
time). This gives us about 4 megs for each client.

  Besides, I have very strong objections to using the get element for this -
you yourself use the word 'recall' which IMHO describes the whole concept
much better (and it is really simple to understand that way). You want to
<recall> what the 'star' was at the time the category 'MY NAME IS *' was
last activated. Or you want to recall what the input was at that time. Or
the value of 'foobar'.

  As for the level of abstractness, I have a somewhat different opinion
about  the distinction between "He said 'name' is what?" and "He said 'my
name is' what?", or which one is less concerned about the 'actual meaning'.

Kim