[alicebot-archcomm] Program D 4.1.5

[Noel Bush]

Version 4.1.5 of Program D is now available for download from:
http://alicebot.org/downloads

Full release notes are at:
http://alicebot.org/resources/programd/release-notes.html

A revised "getting started" guide is at:
http://alicebot.org/resources/programd/readme.html

(Both documents are also in the distributions.)

Please post bug reports on the Bugzilla system at:
http://alicebot.org/bugzilla

A condensed version of the release notes:

====================================
What's New

This release of Program D is significant for stability and important
functionality improvements. Here is a list of highlights:

    * Multiple Bot Support

      Program D now supports an unlimited number of bots running from
the same process.

    * Separable/Shareable Substitution, Splitter, Predicate Definitions

    * Better Configuration of Listeners

    * Database-based Logging Option

      You can now choose to have all chats logged to a database. This
facilitates a form of log viewing that is much more efficient and easier
to work with than the XML approach in previous releases. A companion
bundle of PHP files for viewing the log database will be released
separately.

    * AIML Syntax Checking

      Program D now does a better job checking some aspects of your AIML
syntax when files are loaded. You will be alerted to malformed
categories, invalid pattern expressions, and non-AIML elements in
certain locations.

    * Simple GUI Console

      (This was actually available in a previous release but not
documented.)

    * Artificial "Heart"

      The bot now has a "heart", of sorts, that can issue regular pulses
to let you know it's alive. At present the only implemented pulse is a
text message to the console, but an interface has been provided so that
you can easily add modules that update a database, send email, etc.

    * Response Timeout Control

      You can set a maximum time allowed for trying to get a response. 

    * Graphmaster "Node Height" Optimization

      An optimization to the Graphmaster algorithm suggested by Richard
Wallace on the alicebot-developer list has been implemented.

    * Connect and Inactivity Strings

      Now you can customize the strings used as custom inputs to the bot
to signal a new connection or inactivity.

    * Targeting Tool

      The targeting tool is still very much a prototype, just a
cleaned-up version of what was released in Program dB...however, in this
version you can actually type in the target panel, which I'd managed to
mess up previously.

    * Bug Fixes

      4.1.5 is the last release that predates the Foundation's new
bug-tracking system . Subsequent releases will make use of this system
to enumerate bugs and their status. The following bug descriptions are
more anecdotal than we'd like to provide in the future.

          o A serious set of thread synchronization problems has been
addressed and seems to have eliminated most or all deadlock and race
conditions that were causing sporadic, enormous delays in some previous
builds.

          o Some major problems with the substituter have been
corrected.

          o The problems with progressively deteriorating response times
seem to have been solved. Even under heavy load, a reasonably-equipped
machine should see average response times in the <40ms range, very often
down to 1-2ms. We intend to publish some performance test results soon.

          o The pathname handling for learn operations has been improved
to work more "intuitively"--i.e., paths that are expressed relative to
the files in which they are listed should work.

          o The AliceIRC listener correctly prepends a "#" to channel
names when joining.

====================================
Important Notes on System Requirements

Program D 4.1.5 requires a JVM or JRE that is compatible with the Java 2
Platform version 1.4 . If you do not intend to modify the source code,
you can download just the JRE (Java Runtime Edition), which is
significantly smaller than the SDK (about 9MB as compared with ~40!).

The current reason for the Java upgrade requirement is an
internationalization-related issue that may not pertain to all users. If
the upgrade is onerous for you, post to the alicebot-developer mailing
list for assistance with learning the necessary steps to build a version
that will be compatible with JDK 1.3.