Re: a couple of swarm questions

[Nelson Minar]

>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?

yes, and yes. I'm hoping to have one more incremental release before
we all go to Alife V May 13, and then another release for Alife V
itself. My big contribution is a new way of starting up Swarm,
including batch mode and better control of how the thing runs. It's
shaping up pretty well, still more work to do.

>1. re the tk sim control widget the demos use:
>   it would be nice to have a Step button to go along with run.

What do you expect step to do exactly? My best guess is "run the next
pending action", whether it be an atomic action or a foreach. Another
reasonable option is "run to the next time", at least if you're
running a model that has time. I could think of other things step
could mean, too :-) Clearly some better control is needed.

>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.

As part of the batch overhaul, the "form" thing has been replaced with
a probe object on a special Experiment object which encapsulates all
your variables. Much less hackish, and I believe it should be possible
to have methods as well as raw variables.

>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

I think Manor will have to answer this - I believe something like this
is doable, if nothing else than by overriding giveCompleteProbeDisplay.