[alicebot-archcomm] <set> tag, and clearing predicates

[Jonathan Roewen]

> Because you're not allowed to write value="" :-)

Hmm, okay then. I don't see why not though.

> This is one really cryptic part of the spec I'm not too happy about. This
> somehow happened when it was decided to remove "startswith" and "endswith"
> and "contains" from the condition and (as an alternative) allow wildcards
in
> the value part (to be precise - AIML patterns)

Since when did this become part of the spec? Last I heard, this was a
non-spec feature of ProgramD.

> Unfortunately, a pattern must (says the spec) be at least a word or a
> wildcard - you can't have an empty pattern. This brings a little
> inconsistency in the whole system - ever wondered why the default
> <pattern>*</pattern> category gets activated on an empty input, when it
> matches one or more words?

That doesn't sound right. <pattern>*</pattern> shouldn't match an empty
string. In J-Alice, it gives a no match found exception, and may optionally
attempt to trigger a user-defined pattern when this happens.

> Kim