[Java AI Library Development] latest development

[bernard l. <be...@do...>]

that java ai library has undergone some significant changes in the past
week. these are listed below:

1) new name for the library/api
given the rather convoluted name of the library and api, i have decided to
rename it to JAI - which is essentially Java Artificial Intelligence Library
API shortened and abbreviated.

2) new "root" package
to coincide with the renaming of the api, the root package is now "jai".
therefore the ga api is found in jai.ga, the nn api found in jai.nn and so
on.

3) introduction of junit testing framework
i'm pretty impressed with junit as a rapid and flexible testing framework
and have now converted all existing test harnesses to junit test suits and
test cases. this has been fairly straightforward. understanding junit is
very easy as it follows some standard design patterns and is not bloated
(few classes and very little code). it's all in the design of the junit
framework. more on it can be found at http://www.junit.org. this conversion
means you need to include the junit.jar file in your classpath - which in
fact is already done for you if you wish to use the prefabricated ant build
files in the jai cvs repository (see below)

4) introduction of ant as the jai build management tool
ant is cool. that's all. i have created an ant "build" system by creating
two ant xml files: build.xml and targets.xml. the targets.xml file contains
the project targets. these will normally not change much unless the jai
architecture changes radically. in here you will see the targets that clean
the build environment, compile the source, build a distribution (jar file
creation) and create javadoc. the build.xml file contains user/system
specific properties used in targets.xml. these properties relate to many
things such as class path elements, build directories, source code
directories, javadoc generatino output directory, distribution directory and
other javadoc system/user dependent properties. therefore, the build.xml
file needs to be configured to each developers build environment (i.e. your
computer where you are developing and building jai). the build.xml file is
well documented showing exactly what behaviour each property relates to.
when you have a local copy of the build.xml file and you wish to use ant (it
is entirely optional) simply change these properties to suit your build
environment  and voila! ant will be operating for your local copy of the jai
source code. ant can be found at http://jakarta.apache.org/ant.

i can answer any questions relating to any of these changes.

one last thing. the ga api development is close to completion. the code is
not necessarily working properly but many major bugs have been sorted. this
only leaves the coding of a couple of core elements of the api as well as
other choices for each element in the api (i.e. different genomes, different
ga's, etc). the nn api is up for grabs. i have started some coding and
hopefully the idea of how i was thinking it should look is obvious enough. i
open it up to complete recoding or simply continuing the work i have
started. only a couple of conventions need to be adhered to which are not
all that dificult. i can explain these to anyone who wishes to undertake the
coding of this api.

ok.....that's it for now :P

.b