Re: Need input in prioritizing ToonTalk enhancements

I would group these items under three headings:

Usability
1. Flipped pictures
2. Editing text and number pads
7. Publishing tool

Functionality
4. Birds accept nests
5. Enhanced ld birds
8. User defined sensors

Performance
3. Multi-threading
6. Optimizations
9. Scheduler bias

My feeling is that the usability features are a must for the Aug. 
release, thus should be on the top of the list. I accept that the 
publishing tool is in a way orthogonal, and can be deferred to after the 
code freeze, BUT a rough prototype should be available before 15 June, 
to verify this feature doesn't require any internal changes. Ideally, 
the tool itself could be developed by someone else, leaving Ken more 
time to focus on the other items. The problem is I can't say who that 
someone might be.

I'm not sure about the priorities for the other items. On the face of 
it, performance influences everyone while the functionality items are 
task-specific. Also, work on performance tends to flush out existing 
bugs, while introducing functionality tends to create new ones (although 
multi-threading might be an exception to this rule). In any case, I 
doubt if we'll get any of this done in two weeks time, so most of them 
would go into the X version anyway.

I would suggest that the scoring function should be something like
    (number of activities which need this feature / estimated number of 
days to code and debug it) - (is there a reasonable workaround?)

- Yishay

Ken Kahn wrote:

>Hi all.
>
>During the meeting this morning we agreed that the following
>enhancements should be made to ToonTalk if time permits. Any
>enhancements will either be made by June 15 (to allow for more than 2
>months of testing with an unchanging release) or will be made in the
>fall after the August 31st release. I need help deciding which
>enhancements I should try to add by June 15 and which ones to postpone.
>Let me know if you have strong feelings about any of these.
>
>The list roughly in the order we talked about them are
>
>1. Flipped pictures will have an area at the bottom for a label (much
>like the labels of boxes) that will have an thumbnail image of the other
>side at the corner. You can type a label while pointing to it. Note that
>these labels will not support translation as text pads do.
>
>2. Editing while holding text pads and number pads. There are 2 parts of
>this. One is the addition of an insertion point that you can change with
>the arrow keys. This means you can move back, rubout part, and insert
>new characters or digits. The second change is that ToonTalk will allow
>any changes to a number pad while being held. For example if you are
>holding 0 you can type - and get -0. If you then type 5 you get -5. If
>instead you drop it the -0 in converted to 0 at that point. If you are
>holding a number with robots on the back or a sensor then this ability
>to type intermediate syntactically incorrect values will only work if it
>is turned off. This scheme subsumes the earlier proposal to have an edit
>text box on the Pause dialog.
>
>3. Use of multiple threads internally within ToonTalk. The most
>immediate and least disruptive use of this is to make foreign birds much
>easier to use since ToonTalk won't freeze while the code implementing a
>foreign bird is running. It could also be applied to many other
>situations where ToonTalk pauses -- e.g. accessing files or the web or
>to some extent when recording time travel. This may well introduce bugs
>so will be activated only if enabled via the toontalk.ini file.
>
>4. A nest given to a bird is accepted and it acts as if the nest had
>been dropped on the receiving nest hence combining them. May cause
>problems so will be enabled via toontalk.ini. Should significantly
>simplify the connecting of tools with a bird/nest interface.
>
>5. Enhanced long-distance birds. This will enabled them to get through
>firewalls and to work even if the nest is moved or copied. Too big a job
>for the June 15 deadline.
>
>6. Performance improvements to make time travel pause for much shorter
>periods. This is the major shortcoming for using time travel now.
>
>7. No discussion of the publishing tool during our meeting. This is a
>separate executable that can be done after the June 15 freeze.
>
>======
>
>8. We discussed user-defined sensors and decided to give that low
>priority. Other sensor enhancements as well.
>
>9. No discussion of scheduler bias maybe because the new way that robots
>move on the floor fixes some of this problem.
>
>------------------
>
>Best,
>
>-ken
>
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> 
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
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>

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