As you have noticed: The foundry is here!

So what are the goals we should go for? Both project developers and readers should start to propose some realistic targets.
What do you expect from this community? Tell us about!

My thoughts about this:

Its almost impossible to achieve perfect integration of all foundry projects. But we should at least aim to share some experiences and make the first steps toward a common standard.

Lets make this foundry the official community for OpenSource AI development !

Nice to see you here Edison ;)

I'm not sure about the long term yet, but there are plenty of short term goals:

- Contact and list all open source AI projects, especially those on Source Forge
- Provide facilities for looking up projects by category or language

I'll take care of the technical requirements myself mostly, so feel free to bounce ideas about those too!

I am always concerned about the average end-user who wants to get in touch with AI, but needs an easy entry-point. So here's a goal I consider important:

- categorization of the projects
It'd be nice if I could recieve a list ordered by the type of project/software. E.g. desktop-programs, toys, screensavers, libraries etc. The more accurate the categories, the more useful the foundry.

Btw. sourceforge does offer something like that in their software map, but this could be done even better here because there won't be so many projects after all.

And another goal:

- publicity
The foundry could become a base of creating publicity for AI projects and AI in general. An area could be created which mainly focuses in publicity around the foundry and the related projects. Who knows what might be the outcome of this.

That's it for now, Greetings,

Konrad.

The number of projects is still very low. So i guess it makes no sense to categorize them yet. However, for future purposes this might be of interest.

I agree on your second point (publicity).
It would be very nice to have a common place to store documents/papers. The question is: which format does everybody use? We could have a 'online-system', a 'html-upload-system' or a combination of both. But there are several other formats like tex, ascii or docbook (which i prefer for example).

To Alex: How about a vote on this?

What I (as new reader and AI programmer) think would be very useful, is a sort of AI playground. Basically, it should be a world where you can put in whatever you want.

I think it would be great if (beginning) AI programmers can try out various techniques without having to create lots of code to make something visible on screen 'n stuff...

Example: Code (or use open source material) a unit using a finite state machine which needs to survive by eating and sleeping. You place some food somewhere and just let the unit run around "The playground" looking for food.

But it should also be possible to create a neural network for finding the enemy, or whatever.

People should not be bothered with creating loads of graphics/sound code, but have an engine where they can easily put systems in for trying out AI stuff...

How about using OpenOffice file specs as standard file format? They seem to have a great future ahead and will be usable on a vast basis of computer platforms.

If you don't know about OpenOffice, here's the project check www.openoffice.org

OpenOffice definately has to be developed further before I really start using it!

Due to the fact that I have no MS word license at work (yet), I decided to type my document in OpenOffice writer. After a few days I wanted to save the document (obviously, saved in between as well): It crashed, and made me not only lose the changes of that day. I lost the *entire* document! So if you are going to use openoffice; beware!

Have you reported the bug to the OpenOffice developers? Free software really needs help from everybody in the community to drive on.

BTW I've been using OpenOffice for months and not once had I such problem. But hey, each PC machine is different.

Hello it is always great to have a look here,

I think I may bring some informations on some points
discussed here.

* I'm in the process of making an AI framework and I have
a validated project on Sourceforge.
When reading your posts, I can say that for me, it will be really
interesting to have the same tools in a place that is able to
give some more accurate help.Because,(tell me if I'm wrong) this
would be an AI forge, there will be the good people in the good place.

* I'm also agree with sweex about "small" project without a wonderfull FPS video (That's what I'm aiming at).But is it the good question as it depend almost on those whom manage their project ? not the foundry.I hope so.

* Another main interest I would look for is a "auto-link" between projects of the same kind (with same cat. ).

* What about a clear(simple) projects subects map, it's always difficult to navigate between projects subjects at SF, you could say that there is not too many projects to have this constraint, why not use it as a good start instead ?
You would be able to know what you look for with a litle graph : NN GA KB, etc, in the leaf of that tree would be some global projects infos you would click on and enter the area of your interest.

* For docs, I tried some months the Star Office version and its open version . I can say that it's really "light" for some fonctionnalities, and it surely had evolved since I left it.

What about deciding the data format first? what about one that is software independant like XML ? it s even possible to have an AI depot software with its own Schema and style sheet to give all the docs the same aspects, structures avoiding them to be too much "exotic" , sometimes unclear. Do you need to have macros, word spelling, insert theme, etc ??
And with it,you are also are platform compatible, have the final format of your choice, HTML, TxT, PDF,etc.

* What would be the versionning tools ?

Hope that make sense,

I'm surprised that you've had much of a problem with openoffice.
I started using it recently and the only big differences I've noticed between it and MS Word 2000 are that it's easier to understand how the document works (image anchors etc.) and the file sizes are about a third as big. I haven't had a crash yet.