[alicebot-archcomm] pluggable pattern processor

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

My favorite dead horse to beat on whenever anybody talks about regular
expressions and changing the AIML pattern language, is called the <pp>
pluggable pattern processor propoposal.

Imagine, no more debate over # or ? or _ or *!
Who needs a committee to decide these matters anyway!

Let each implementation, nay, each individual botmaster select the pattern
matching language of his or her preference.

The proposal is so simple, a child could understand it:

Inside <pattern>...</pattern> we allow a new tag called <pp>, the
semantics of which is to alter the AIML matching in any way, defined by
any other pattern matching scheme or language.

<pp name="AIML"> is the default
<pp name="regular expressions"> [wow]+
<pp name="neural networks"> cool!
<pp name="fuzzy"> Whatever!
<pp name="snobol"> I've died and gone to heaven.

The only really significant matter this committee would need to decide is
the priority of pattern matching processors, so to preserve the property
that the result should be exactly one unique AIML template.

In fact who needs a new tag, we could make it an attribute of the
<pattern> tag.



-- 
Dr. Rich
W A L L A C E
ALICE A.I. Foundation
drwallace@www.alicebot.org