Saturday, August 27, 2011

HLL Robot Application and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

Visit the High Level Logic (HLL) Website
— Home of XPL (eXtensible Process Language)

It's like XML, but you can store source code in it.

New Article: Artificial Intelligence, XML, and Java Concurrency

I chose SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to implement robot movement tracking in the robot HLL browser-based GUI. This link is to the history part of an SVG Primer from W3C. Its popularity assures continued support. (Good choice Roger. -- :) {pat on back}

Excerpt:

By the end of 1999, development of SVG had begun in earnest. Within two years, six subsequent working drafts appeared. IBM and Corel each released software that exported SVG. IBM released an SVG viewer and several software initiatives released SVG drawing packages for a variety of operating systems. Since that time support and endorsement has grown. By 2005, A Google search for "SVG" returned over 3.7 million links on the WWW. Table 1 compares these results with other technologies. By February 2009, all these numbers had increased considerably (HTML itself rose almost eightfold), but SVG had risen to 11.9 million web documents moving well ahead of Fortran which had risen to 8.6 million.

QueryNumber of documents found

"HTML"

1,610,000,000

"PHP"

454,000,000

"Java" (includes island)

150,000,000

"Linux"

86,400,000

"Perl"

51,600,000

"JavaScript"

49,900,000

"Unix"

35,200,000

"C++"

28,900,000

"SQL"

21,200,000

"MySQL"

20,300,000

"Pascal" (includes Blaise)

14,500,000

"Visual Basic"

8,330,000

"Fortran"

5,350,000

"SVG"

3,750,000

"COBOL"

2,630,000

"Lisp" (includes stuttering)

2,300,000

SMIL

1,600,000

"awk"

912,000

"VML"

497,000

"ALGOL"

489,000

"SNOBOL"

40,900

Monday, August 8, 2011

Routine Behavior

Visit the High Level Logic (HLL) Website
— Home of XPL (eXtensible Process Language)

It's like XML, but you can store source code in it.

I've discussed before in my series of posts, notably in The Ghosts in My Machine: Chapter 2, that routine behavior or logical patterns are somehow difficult to accept as sophisticated enough to warrant examination in advancing machine intelligence. In my view, people can find routine logic difficult to think about and it therefore gets passed over. The uncomfortable feeling that superficially seems status oriented, might have neurological roots.

Over the years, I've become convinced that semi-unconscious or even unconscious routine behavior can be somewhat sophisticated - probably moreso than we might first imagine. It's as though our brains want to suppress thoughts about routine logic. There may be a very logical explanation for why it would - to keep us from being overwhelmed - to make our thought -> action responses more efficient. That's a classic explanation that I believe can be applied to a higher level of logic than has been associated with unconscious thought before.

Just thought I'd post what appears to me to be a related article: Could inner zombie be controlling your brain?
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Thursday, August 4, 2011

HLL to Support WebSockets

Visit the High Level Logic (HLL) Website
— Home of XPL (eXtensible Process Language)

It's like XML, but you can store source code in it.

The time is right. The mood is good. HLL will include its own WebSocket server. Earlier today, my test browser app. printed:

WebSocket Test

CONNECTED

With HTML5, the world takes another step in trying to catch up to me, in a very substantial way. WebSockets FINALLY provide real two-way communication between the browser and server. HTML5 will revolutionize browser based web applications. WebSockets in particular mean that all that web stuff won't need to be so point-and-clicky anymore.

The WebSocket standard is not yet finalized, but is in “final call” status. This means we should not be expecting any more radical changes to the standard, opening the door to development that won't be threatened by a constantly changing standard.

There are a few WebSocket servers that have been in development for a while, constantly upgrading to keep up with changes to the proposed standard. The Sun/Oracle glassfish project includes one, written in Java of course. Client-Server technology specialist Kaazing offers a WebSocket server free for developing and prototyping. The Google Code site offers one written in Python called pywebwocket that at the moment seems out of date.

Cutting-edge application developers have needed good stable browser implementations. This week, Google announced an upgrade to Chrome's implementation of HTML5 WebSockets. Firefox will also include an upgraded implementation in version 6. Other browsers like Opera have been putting special effort into HTML5 support. Google announced earlier a plug-in that would allow its technology to be used with other browsers, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Google software engineer Takeshi Yoshino comments:
"Given that the specification is now in 'last-call' and and no further breaking changes are expected, it should now be safe to use WebSockets for production application development."
Whether developers need their own WebSocket server is an engineering decision. If you decide to build one yourself, be advised that it's not as easy as a simple socket echo server and there is no Sun/Oracle Java Trail to guide you. You'll face standards piled on standards and interesting encryptions for security. If you want to support all browsers right now, you'll need to support more than one version of the proposed standard. Once you're connected, there are issues like multiple connections to consider.

The HLL WebSocket server will continue a commitment to an independent lightweight framework for distributed applications. Application developers using HLL will be able to use WebSockets in an easy and flexible manner. Communication between HLL components is critical. Client-server technology has been there from the start. WebSockets will tie into key features, replacing older two-way communication techniques developed for earlier versions.
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