Re: infobot mailing lists

[Paul L. A. <pl...@so...>]

Jonathan Hitchcock writes: 

> All I was saying is that a fresh look at everything, the pros and cons
> of python/perl/everything else should be examined, and the right tool
> chosen for the job.

Perl is a perfectl tool for the job.  There may be others equally
suitable, but that is not an adequate reason for using them.  Somebody
has already done a lot of re-implementation in perl.  If he were
more comfortable with Python he'd have done it in that, so it's unlikely
he will want to switch to Python just because you prefer it.  If you want
to write your own bot in Python then go right ahead. 

>> Again, it seems silly to bring another communications protocol into
>> play if you want to do this, since the whole purpose of the bots is to
>> be on IRC.
> 
> I'd say the whole purpose of a bot is to be available for queries.
> Whether those queries come from IRC, Jabber, AIM, or a desktop applet,
> a well designed bot should still be able to respond to them.

Well yeah, I can see a real need for that.  I'm running a bot that's
sitting on an IRC channel I use and rather than talk to the bot on the
IRC channel I would much prefer to fire up a Java crapplet and talk to
it directly.  Oh, I see what you're getting at.  I could run the bot
without it talking to anyone but me via my desktop and I could teach it
things and then later I could ask it about stuff I already know. 

>> Not that I would ever want a bot I run getting orders from a bot
>> somebody else runs.
> 
> Even the original infobot source has a method that allows two bots to
> share their data.

IF you wanted it to.  In some situations that might be desirable, in
others it most definitely is not.  You've also incidentally shot down
any reason for using some external protocol to share data because the
bots can already do that. 

> When I mentioned Python, I mentioned it because it was a good language
> for the task (including its platform independence).  When I mentioned
> Perspective Broker, I mentioned it because it is a nice efficient way
> for applications to communicate remotely IF THEY SHOULD WANT TO.

OK, you've convinced me.  Let's rip out the IRC support and Yahoo
support and create our own message service based on PB.  Then we
persuade all the IRC users to switch just so they can talk to our
wonderful bots.  That way we wouldn't have any unnecesary protocols where
we use one protocol to talk to the bots and a different one for bots to
talk to each other.  Or maybe after we switch everyone to chatting by
PB we could put the IRC handler back in so that the bots can talk to
each other by a completely different protocol for no good reason. 

The only reason for needing another protocol so that bots can communicate
is if they're on different servers.  However, in that situation the new
Yahoo support could be used for intercommunication.  Alternatively, and
better, would be an enhancement to allow a bot to be on more than one
server. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support