Richard Coursey	John Middlemas
comp.ai.neural-nets JAVA
Richard writes:- >>This is a proposal to add certain extensions to HTML to allow >>Web pages themselves to become the central units of a >>distributed (and local) programming network language... (I wrote) >It seems to me that a NN Engine written in JAVA would preclude the need >for more HTML extensions and be much more flexible. One of the points of Web neurons is to get rid of Applets and Javascript and put the programming side of things on a neural basis. A Web neuron network or "Weblet" would be able to duplicate any neural-net and NN engine but would not be one itself in the conventional sense. I think it could do a lot more. It is desirable to keep many of the qualities of HTML. If JAVA were used then all these would have to be re-invented in JAVA. There seems little point in doing this when all you need are a few HTML extensions. Integration is better then fragmentation. I agree that many existing HTML extensions may be unnecessary but on the other hand some crucial ones have been omitted. If you will pardon me for a long post I will go on a bit. Any programming task can also be performed by linked HTML pages (Weblets) with suitable HTML extensions that allow:- Triggering of other pages (this can give multi-tasking capabilities) Data to be passed between pages Data to be stored in pages, and named Simple logic flow (IF, ELSE) acting on stored data names String handling Links to be made/broken Pages to be created/deleted (things I didn't think of yet) all automatically. It may look like a lot but not that many extensions are needed, just the right ones (IMHO). Any database and database handling program can also be duplicated by a Weblet. Databases have to do things like - find, sort, add (record), delete, goto next, update, etc. As a crude example - to find say Mr Jones' record in a Weblet address book database:- In this I am thinking that each HTML page (Web neuron) represents one database element (e.g. "Smith"). Input "Jones" from the user. Trigger the first Surname element page, and pass "Jones" to it. Store "Jones" as say ARG1 in that page. Suppose the contents of this page were "Bloggs" stored as CONTENTS. Also, that the record number "1" is stored as RECNUM. Do a test:- IF CONTENTS=ARG1 then trigger a result page and pass it RECNUM. ELSE, trigger the next Surname element page (in record 2) and pass it "Jones" Carry on until you get a match, or the last element passes say "No match" to the results page. The record number could be stored as text in the results page and displayed. Note there is no need for a search Loop as in standard languages. Only one simple IF ELSE per element page (Web neuron). This does involve a radically different programming strategy. Each database element now becomes a sort of "object" with its own (very small amount of) code, and with explicit links to other elements. So JAVA is not needed at all because the programming is handled by the Web neurons, the way they are linked together, and a very small amount of simple code (using IF ELSE) inside each. Looping constructs such as WHILE, FOR, REPEAT, NEXT etc and indeed GOSUB, common in BASIC, C, JAVA etc are not needed since their function is taken over by linking (or hyperlinking if you prefer). These Looping constructs cause confusion to new (and old) programmers and should be banned. Please note they are not present in neural-networks. I consider structured programming to have been an extremely expensive blunder. That is why Neural-nets and object orientation have made headway. I don't wish to appear arrogant but the true answer is simple and none of these, i.e. Web neuron Weblets or something very similar. It's the way the brain works! To be fair though - it doesn't have to be done in HTML. It is worth considering starting from scratch i.e. Assembly language, or even microprocessor design. I just though the HTML option looked rather elegant since HTML is based on hyperlinking which is one of the cornerstones of Weblets. I realise I did include the <WHILE> HTML extension in the original post but I thought more about things since then. Thanks for your reply.