<div>Dear Steve,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>We are looking forward to hearing your alternatives to the current direction.</div>
<div>Could you talk little about it published?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The reasons of lack of improvements on the core communication tools of the AG (vic and rat) </div>
<div>may be due to their inflexible architecture.</div>
<div>We also think VIC & RAT should be replaced by one of </div>
<div>new framework and new architecture to improve it's useability and extensibility.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Before the day comes out, we would continue to make these tools (vic &rat) better.</div>
<div>BTW, we plan to release MPEG4/H.264-enable vic and </div>
<div>software based acoustic echo cancellation-enable rat in the late June.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Regards,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Barz</div>
<div> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/20/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Steve Smith</b> <<a href="mailto:ssmith@vislab.usyd.edu.au">ssmith@vislab.usyd.edu.au</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">> I'd like to remedy any lack of information that's out there, and you'll see efforts in the<br>> near term to do so. While we're in this intermediate state, let us know of questions so
<br>> we can address them.<br><br>Thanks Tom.<br><br>I have a couple of concerns with the current state of affairs. One is<br>that the current AGTK is an implementation rather than a protocol; i.e.<br>it relies on a particular version of globus and other packages, and it
<br>is all but impossible to interoperate with it. I would like a simple<br>method to integrate other app into an AG session without having to rely<br>on massive third-party libraries.<br><br>Another is that the web-services/globus architecture is a poor match for
<br>the semantics of how we use AG; conceptually the AG is<br>connection-oriented, but globus/WS is oriented towards transient<br>connections.<br><br>I think these two problems have forced to development of AG to focus on
<br>the AGTK, which should really be the simplest component. This leads to<br>the third problem, which is that the core communication tools of the AG<br>(vic and rat) are being neglected, and need a major overhaul. A lot of
<br>the complexity and poor usability of the AG comes from these tools and<br>the necessity of the AGTK to work around their limitations (vic<br>especially), There is some good work being done on vic replacement but<br>the Markus' ANU team, but that only addresses part of the problem, and
<br>may not suit all configurations. I've done some basic work on cleaning<br>up the core and hope to be able to dedicate more time to it soon, and<br>Douglas at UQ is doing some work, but we really need more people on it.
<br>Unfortunately it's not a sexy job.<br><br>Anyway, I'm currently writing a paper for the APAC conference about some<br>alternatives to the current direction. I believe you're heading over<br>for that conference so it would be good to talk then.
<br><br>Cheers,<br>Steve<br><br><br></blockquote></div><br>