[Reality] Wearable computing

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

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On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 05:00:55 -0500 (CDT), Allen Short <washort@twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> >>>>> "Glyph" == Glyph Lefkowitz <glyph@twistedmatrix.com> writes:

> > I think this means that we should have "category objects" which specify
> > factories and invariants for certain constellations of functionality that
> > can be associated with Things, and perhaps for Things themselves, in order
> > that we don't get nonsensible (incompatible) combinations of stuff.
> > 'Electronic + Portable + Clothing = YES' but 'Clothing + Landscape +
> > Explosive = NO'.  This may also imply that some adapters are intrinsic but
> > others are extrinsic.  (I *am* a flute, but I just *happen* to be enchanted
> > at the moment.)

> i smell a use case for opencyc...
> (*flicks on Asbahr-shaped spotlight*)

> seriously though, this is moving into the domain of knowledge bases and
> probably should be treated as such, whether you use cyc or framerd or
> whatever. at the least, some sort of storage of relationships apart from the
> relationships of the code would help.

Hm.  I think I disagree.

Perhaps phrasing it in terms of combinations it seems that way, but the notion
of category-objects is very much a "relationship of the code".  At the very
least, this is a development tools question: when we're adding reactivities to
the chemistry system, that seems like it's definitely somewhere that you should
be entering data into a knowledge base.  However, when we're adding wholly new
varieties of "stuff" to the game, you ought to be able to do that without
leaving emacs.

My opinion here comes from the fact that the prototype-based pseudo-inheritance
system in the old Reality was confusing and difficult to use.  If we have
in-game (or in-knowledge-base) representations of rules about the code itself,
then we have a database without which the code is nonsensical.  Moreover, the
code can *seem* to make sense, and we can have libraries that *seem* to use it,
but there are unseen knowledge-base assertions which are no longer being
verified, causing it to explode dramatically in the face of invalid input.

-- 
 |    <`'>    |  Glyph Lefkowitz: Traveling Sorcerer   |
 |   < _/ >   |  Lead Developer,  the Twisted project  |
 |  < ___/ >  |      http://www.twistedmatrix.com      |

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