Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
To: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Wednesday, August 19, 1998 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...


>Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com> wrote:
>> Could somebody please tell me what technical issues I have ignored?  When
I
>> was challenged on technical grounds re: screenplays, I started
communicating
>> with the author of Xlab and posted his things here.
>
>this is actually a very good example.
>your whole proposal of the screenplays was ignorant of the fact that xlab
>existed. you found out that 90% of the functionality are already there only
>after someone on this list pointed its existence out to you.


Tom, why don't you go read what the author of XLab said.  He had NO IDEA his
program could ever be used for help, and he LOVED the idea.  Do I need to
pull that quote out for you?

I'm not concerned if something's been done before.  I'm merely concerned
that something isn't standard now but should be.  If cluehunting,
screenplays, or anything else I asked for was standard and already there,
it'd be a different story.

>
>> one.  Cluehunting?  I fail to see how "it's been done before" and "it's
not
>> possible" are NOT mutually exclusive.
>
>but you have ZERO information on HOW it could be done.


Well, there's always stdin/stdout scripts.  Readline/zsh/emacs stuff proves
it's possible, it's just a matter of defining how it should work while
making sure it's not an impossible dream.

>here's another example for you: that game I'm working on at the moment
>employs a simple, but functional natural language parser for input and a
>similiar simple, but working natural language generator for output.
>
>I started about the same way you did, by thinking "wouldn't it be cool if
>the program communicated with the user in the user's language?". but I
>didn't go around and demand webspace for this idea. and en route to
>implementing it I found out that both fields - natural language parsers
>(nlp) and natural language generators (nlg) are VAST fields of current
>research. almost without knowing it, I've moved to the very frontier of
>current date computer science. that's when I backed down and had to REFINE
>my proposal to make it feasable, to make it possible to get both the result
>I was looking for and still be able to come up with it before 2020.


So, tell me Tom, did I walk up and put up "wouldn't it be cool for the
computer to figure out what the user wants", or did I make a semi detailed
proposal as to how it would operate, how it was different, how it was
better, what needed to be worked out, etc?

What part of cluehunting appears impossible to you, Tom?

>now, to return to the point after this long example - what people are
>missing is this refinement step. and idea is a nice thing, but you have to
>do more than that. you've got to add some research into the topic, look if
>similiar things are around, how they work, what their advantages and
>shortcomings are. you have to get at least enough technical know-how to
find
>out if your idea is possible at all to code, if it will be hard or easy,
and
>where it will interfere with or enhance other parts of the whole project.
>and then you have to sit down and rework the idea. I wouldn't even call it
a
>proposal before you did that.
>
>anything else - and I mean ANYTHING, no matter how good as an idea - is
just
>sand in the machinery.

So I guess those proposals on the GNOME web site should go, eh?

Damn Bowie with that color reactiveness too...

See, thing is, I DID attempt to list the similar things that were around, I
just didn't know about em all.  I DID go WAYYYY into advantages and
disadvantages, read the proposal.

Call it what you want.  Public seems to relish the fact that they're being
asked what they think of something before it's shoved in their face for a
yes/no vote.  Seems to me I can quote you asking this of the UISG.