= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- February 1999 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume IV Issue 2 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1999 iMatix Corporation - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Programming -- Technology -- Finite State Machines -- News -- Other Stuff == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- Last week I was trying to copy a document on a large departmental copier. This animal is able to copy, collate, and stable while printing on both sides of the paper, translating it into German, and singing the opening aria from 'La Traviatta' all at the same time. Okay, I exaggerate - it can't really staple. Really cleverly, it copies from last page to first, and on page two, it suddenly stopped, and said 'Check Bin!' Oh-oh. The small LCD screen showed a small animated cartoon of a martian opening the side door of the copier. I did this, trying to make the correct martian facial gestures, and the copier then said 'Remove Paper!'. Yup, two sheets of half- printed paper were crinkled-up there. I pulled them out, getting black and sticky toner on my hands. Okay, wash the hands, come back, 'Close Bin!', and then 'Press Start Button!'. I did. It said 'Clear Sorter!'. This is the bunch of trays where the copies always come out in the wrong order. I did that, and pressed Start again. The machine got ready, started doing its noise-of-a-combine-harvester imitation, then stopped, saying 'Check Bin!' On the little screen, the martian pulled-down the side door, pulled-out the paper, and went-off to wash his little green hands. I did the same, being sure to imitate his (or her, you can't tell) walk. One never knows, it could matter. Once more I pressed the Start Button, and listened to the internal machinations of the photocopier. It got as far as spewing one copy of page 2 into the sorter, then said 'Check Cover!'. On the screen, the martian had its head in its little green hands. I'm made of stronger stuff, so I opened the top cover. There was nothing. I looked for the 'Give Hint!' key, but there was none. I closed the cover again, and the machine now said 'Internal Error - Cycle Power!'. This is techtalk for 'We apologise: this photocopier is running Windows 98'. Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I rebooted the copier anyhow. The small martian was carefully fashioning a noose, possibly because as soon as I pressed 'Start', the copier said 'Check Bin!'. Admitting defeat, I went back to my office and told my colleague, Marc, that the copier had beaten me, 1-0. 'Did you clear the bin?', he asked. 'Sure, five times', I replied. Rising to the challenge, he strode off to battle. I waited for the screams, but after about thirty seconds, Marc was back with the finished copies in his hands. I said something rude, and he explained that the little martian did not know that a bit of paper had gotten jammed in another, deeply hidden bin. The moral of this story is that one should not believe martians with little hands. Or maybe, that a pretty interface that hides vital information can be pretty useless. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 1 February 1999 == NEWS ..---.-...---.--..-.---...-.-.----.-..-.-.-.-.-----..-.-.-.----.-..- iMatix announces partnership with Tzolkin Corporation! Xitami supports dynamic DNS under Windows, Unix, and OS/2! Full press release below... GSLgen hits the market!! Yes, our new universal code generator has hit the market with a bang. Glenn R. Williams says 'I think it is an excellent product with great potential'. Stay tuned for the release of GSLperl, an Open Source implementation of GSL. == PRESS RELEASE --...-.-.--...-..---..-.-.--...-...-.-.---.-..----.-.-.--.. Tzolkin Corporation teams with iMatix Corporation to integrate TZO Dynamic DNS technology with Xitami, a popular Open Source web server. Pepperell, MA (February 1, 1999) – Tzolkin Corporation and iMatix Corporation announced today that they have developed a web server with an integrated dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS). The TZO Dynamic DNS allows users with a Dynamic IP address to host a website using a permanent domain name. iMatix has incorporated Tzolkin’s unique DDNS technology into the popular Xitami web server, which is currently listed on Internet.Com's Top 10 Server List for over 45 weeks. Tzolkin’s DDNS technology, branded as TZO, gets around the main problem for home Internet users, namely that their server's IP number changes with each connection. Tzolkin currently offers a low cost Dynamic DNS Internet Service that allows Dialup, Cable-modem, or xDSL to use a fixed server name instead of a Dynamic IP address. This service will be offered under the 'xitami.net' domain beginning on February 1, 1999. The users will get an initial 30-day free trial, and users can purchase the service for a $24.95 fee per year. Gary Cook, President of Tzolkin Corporation says "Our Dynamic DNS technology allows a cable modem, xDSL or dialup user that is stuck with a Dynamic IP address to get a permanent Internet domain name. Typically, this problem is what holds many home or small business users back from operating their own web server on the Internet." Pieter Hintjens, CEO of iMatix feels that this product will be a breakthrough for home and business users that want to run their own web server. "This is a great match, because the home user can now get a fixed domain name even when their IP address changes frequently." See http://www.xitami.net for more details. About the Tzolkin Corporation: Based in Pepperell, MA, the Tzolkin Corporation is a leader in Dynamic DNS technology aimed at the home and small business user. The company assists home and business Internet users get a domain name for their computer, even if they have a dynamic IP address. Tzolkin Corporation offers many flexible Dynamic DNS, domain and mail hosting services that allows the small or home office user to get more from their Internet connection. The company’s web address is http://www.tzo.com About iMatix Corporation iMatix Corporation is an Internet-based software technology firm whose products include the popular open source Xitami web server, which offers fast and easy service on Windows, Unix, and other platforms. iMatix Corporation has been a pioneer in developing open source products as a core of their business strategy since 1996. The Xitami web site is at http://www.xitami.com. iMatix Corporation’s website is at http://www.imatix.com Contact Information Pieter Hintjens pieter@imatix.com Eric McIntyre Eric@tzo.com Voice: (978) 433-6865 == INBOX -..-..---.-.---..-.-.-.--...---.....----.-.-.----....--.--...----.- From: "Glenn R. Williams" Send reply to: gloonie@ibm.net To: editors@imatix.com Subject: Re: Liberetto IV/1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Pieter and all! Naturally, after so many days of visiting the iMatix site and staying home to wait for the cyber-arrival of the next Liberetto, I was overjoyed to see a the announcement of GSLgen! We will try it out and evaluate. If it is of the usual iMatix quality, it looks like a license is in the works! Can you publish a little something on how this all fits in with the development of Libero? Is GSLgen the future of Libero? Anyway, congratulations on the new addition to your suite of tools. Regards, Glenn Glenn R. Williams Advanced Decisions Inc. >>>>>>>>>>>>> Libero basically takes a structured data file (the dialog definition), then massages this into a set of data tables, and then mixes the result with a schema in the language of your choice. GSLgen does the same, except for the massage part. GSL is a lot more powerful than Libero's schema language, though, and you can actually do the grunt work (a good massage) directly in the schema. GSL represents the future of Libero for two reasons: first off, it works with XML files, and it's becoming clear that XML is a good standard for structured data like Libero's dialogs. You'll find a wealth of tools that work with XML. It's going to be worth moving Libero to XML just because of that. Secondly, the GSL language is a standard for schema languages, and once you've learnt how to use it in one application (e.g. Libero), you will find it valuable in many others. So, GSLgen is the future of Libero, once we've worked through a few of the technical details (like how to split tables into multiple lines in languages like Cobol with particular habits). To: editors@imatix.com From: "Stephen R. Holmes" Subject: address change request (Libretto) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear folks; I'm changing my ISP, and the first order of business is to be sure that I continue to receive Libretto each and every month! (An absolutely *wonderful* publication, by the way -- much like your software!) Many thanks, and keep up the great work! Warmest regards... Steve Holmes -- FSMs forever! From: "Chris McFarlane" To: info@imatix.com Subject: Libero, Prelude.h, & SFL, SMT with EGCS (GCC)? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, Would you consider accomodating the compilation of Libero FSM output, prelude.h, SFL, & SMT using the EGCS compiler (a.k.a. Mingw32; [or cygnus/cygwin])? Cheers, Chris McFarlane >>>>>>>>>>>>> What can we say? It should be a piece of cake. Most of the exotic compilers that SFL supports were added by people using the compilers, rather than us. It's a straight-forward business - you compile the various SFL test programs, and hack prelude.h, sfldir, and the other modules until the test programs appear to run correctly. Then you send the result to us, and we rework your changes into the mother of all versions. Then you test our reworking, find lots of bugs, fix these, send them back to us, and this goes around a few times until the thing either works, or some obscure compiler bug forces us to give up. From: Shawn Patton To: info@imatix.com Subject: Libero and adding another language? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, According to the docs: "If it is a language that we can easily get hold of, we'll add support more or less on demand" Can this be true!? You guys are that giving? (nudge nudge, wink wink ;-) Ok then, Will you please add support for php (www.php.net) PHP: A Perl and C like scripting language. Open Source. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Shawn Patton >>>>>>>>>>>>> Not only are we really giving, but a PHP schema already exists. Check- out Bernard de Rubinat's page at http://www.netgames.org/fsm-php/. The PHP schema was written by Attilio , and will be packaged with Libero Real Soon Now. From: Kshipra Sahajpal Subject: Libero To: info@imatix.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, I've recently downloaded Libero am just fiddling round and playing with it... trying to get a hang of things. but I have some trouble here. I was wondering if u could help in suggesting how do I model actions (ie modules to be executed) that occur as soon as u enter a state as opposed to occuring on certain events received in a state. similarly, how do u show actions that occur when a state is to be exited. Any pointers will be appreciated. Cheers soon-turning-into-a-big-libero-fan Kshipra >>>>>>>>>>>>> We asked Libero's author, some hacker called Pieter Hintjens, about this: Liberetto: Pieter, why doesn't Libero support this feature? Surely it's something useful, and many other FSM tools support it... Pieter: True, it's a common notion. People who are used to another FSM tool often ask for it. People who started with Libero never ask for it. When you look at how a FSM is expressed, this is simply a shortcut for a special case - when all events leading to a state have a common action. Liberetto: And isn't that special case worth supporting? Pieter: That's just it. In any realistic dialog, you'll never find such a case. There are always some exceptions. Libero's big advantage over richer FSM tools is precisely that its notation is extremely clear and literal: nothing is hidden. You can read a Libero dialog as documentation, without missing much. Liberetto: No way you're going to change your mind? Pieter: Well, Libero is an Open Source product, so anyone who wants to add this kind of feature can just go ahead and do it. It's no big deal. When we migrate Libero to XML, sometime this year or next year, it'll be even easier, since all the intelligence will be in the schema, instead of the Libero code generator. It will be possible to implement any kind of FSM model with Libero/GSL, instead of the single model we support now. From: "Joern Stannat" To: Subject: sflcomp ----------------------------------------------------------------------- dear sir, have you sflcomp.c in java ? thanks joern >>>>>>>>>>>>> SFL is mainly a C library, although parts have been developed in Perl. We're quite intrigued by collecting modules in other languages, so if you do develop a Java version of sflcomp (oh yes, the answer to your question is 'no'), we'll happily use it as the kernel of an SFL/Java implementation. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---.- To be removed from this mailing list, e-mail us with the subject 'remove'. Liberetto should be taken once monthly, with food and drink.