Re: getting input from human-agents via swarm/tkObjc

[Theodore C. Belding]

Hi Rick!
Since you and I are probably the foremost advocates of quick-and-dirty,
unSwarmish hacks on this list, here goes:

We already know that it's possible within Tk to do what you want.  The only
question seems to be how to integrate that Tk code within your Swarm code.
There seem to be 4 possible levels of integration:
1) using plain Tk with plain Obj C objects
2) using libtclobjc with plain Obj C objects
3) using plain Tk with Swarm objects (?)
4) using libtclobjc with Swarm objects

>From what Chris said, there don't seem to be any pre-written Swarm objects
for you to use.  So at some level, it looks like you'd have to roll your
own Obj C or Swarm objects.  I know it's possible to use plain Tk with
plain Obj C; I haven't yet delved into the innards of any of the other
options.  (And I'm not even really sure about option 3, just because I
don't know of any examples).

I have an example of integrating plain Tcl 7.4 with plain Obj C.  It's
available at:
ftp://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/pub/software/objcCounter.tar.gz

It's essentially Ousterhout's counter example (p. 300), for Obj C.

It might be preferable to use a Swarmish approach to this problem (option
4), but I don't have any experience with that.  And it might take longer to
get up and running.

Maybe Chris or someone else can correct me on this, but I think if anyone
wants a parallel implementation of Swarm, they should work on it themselves
-- the Swarm team has enough to do.
-Ted



--
Ted Belding                      <mailto:address@hidden>
University of Michigan Program for the Study of Complex Systems
<http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~streak/>