a couple of swarm questions

[Rick Riolo]

I have a couple of short questions / suggestions
about swarm:

0. Just between you and me (just whisper back)...is a new
   version of swarm about to be released?
   Will it have some batch controls mechanisms in it?

1. re the tk sim control widget the demos use:
   it would be nice to have a Step button to go along with run.
   (I know I can add it, it would just be nice to have it there
    for many things, including the demos.)

2. re the tk parameter setting widget the demos use:
   it would be nice if it didn't get linked directly
   to addresses of parameters, but instead got linked
   to methods.   then the method could do whatever
   value checking and storing of ok values in whatever
   object those values might be stored in.
   Is these (relatively easily) doable?

3. re probes:  maybe they can do this already.
   It would be nice if, when a probe is made into
   an agent, the probe would send a special
   "initializeForProbe" message to the agent,
   (but only if the corresponding method is 
   defined for the agent, of course).
   For example, I might want a special variable in the
   agent that collects info about the agent's neighborhood,
   and I want that info to be fresh when the agent
   is probed, but perhaps I don't want to go to the
   expense of always keeping it fresh (ie each
   time something else changes in the neighborhood).
   Thus I could have my initializeForProbe method
   do calculations like that.

thanks for the info.
  - r


Rick Riolo                       address@hidden
Program for Study of Complex Systems (PSCS)
1061 Randall Lab     University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/rlr-home.html