[alicebot-general] Fwd: AIML conflict solving

[Noel Bush]

Dr. Rich Wallace wrote:
>> A good approach when in doubt of the spec is to check out programD's behavior since Noel co-authored the specification and wrote that interpreter.
> 
> Actually I wrote the first Java interpreters (program B and D),
> including the Graphmaster matching algorithm.  Noel took over program
> D and made a lot of changes, but I don't think he changed the matching
> methods.

Yes, I didn't change any of the matching methods.  I did rewrite 
virtually every line of code (including the matching methods), in some 
cases several times, and overhauled the architecture in major ways, but 
the program should still be following the specification exactly.

Over the past few years a few issues have come up that are not clearly 
handled by the specification, and for these Program D may have its own 
solution, but this is as arbitrary, bound to change, and 
non-authoritative as any other solution.  I would not promote the idea 
that Program D's approach to an undefined issue carries any more weight 
than any other approach, although I do still have the impression that 
Program D still implements the specification more completely than any 
other implementation (but this may just be some egotistic hallucination 
on my part).

Noel