Re: [help-GIFT] Specifying feature groups in gift-config.mrml

[Wolfgang Müller]

On Tuesday 10 August 2004 11:34, David Squire wrote:

I think we're talking two different things here.

One thing is client/server communication, and the other one is GIFT 
implementation. 

> ... but which is not enforced...

This, IMHO is clearly an implementation thing.

The rest of your mail, too, I guess. 

Current state of affairs is that at construction time, the Accessor of the 
collection finds out if it has the ingredients necessary to construct itself. 
If not, it throws an exception. What you suggest is to give within the config 
file assertions to the GIFT that it will be able to construct a given 
collection.

> Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't think that this is possible at present.

I do think that is possible at present: there are algorithms which can be 
composed of other algorithms, no one requires you to do the fancy blocking 
stuff, you could make an IF with text features only and use it with an IF 
using histograms only.

So in fact, what you want to do is adding a convenience layer on the 
configuration. This in itself is not something bad and given some thoughts 
and time for reaching common grounds this is probably something good. However 
we have to be careful (IMHO), having MRML itself know more about what it is 
handling is also limiting its use.

Cheers,
Wolfgang

-- 
Dr. Wolfgang Müller
LS AI 1
Universität Bayreuth