[alicebot-archcomm] RE: [alicebot-developer] trouble with substitutions

[Kim Sullivan]

> Hey ArchComm members--
>
> I realized today that Noel's great XML specification of
> substitutions is not really part of the AIML standard, just
> part of the implementation of program D.  If Program E or Z
> people want to port the AIML, they should be able to port
> the substitutions too, right?
>
> Therefore, it seems we should get moving on adopting a
> standard for expressing substitions in XML.
>
> Rich

With all due respect, I liked Jon's way better, it had more foresight - one
could specify the name of the substitution, and you didn't need so many
additional single-use tags. We'd be probably deprecating them in favor of a
more general one soon.
Maybe a compromise between these 2 would be ok - one new tag to define a
substitution, and one tag that would group them into a named substitution.

In either case, I'd wait for some time, and let the opensource mechanism
work it out. This issue involves other things as well - mainly startup/bot
definition files (and thus bot property definitions)... I for one am going
to support the current D-type startup file, with a few twists of my own, and
I'll have a look at the way other implementations handle this, if it's XML I
might as well supporti it too.

Just my 2 cents.
Kim