9-FEB-75 19:10:20,1851
Date:  9 FEB 1975 1910-PST
From: SRIDHARAN
Subject: four aspects of the control program
- - - -
The development of the Control program that will help in running 
the demonstration programs smoothly will proceed in 4 steps:
  i) Prepare detailed documentation on each of the participating
     systems. Make this documentation available On-line and in 
     Program-readable format. Create a program to access documentation
     and provide help from TENEX level.
 ii) Develop a TYPESCRIPT facility which will help in saving clean
     copies of Typescripts of various demonstration runs as TENEX files;
     Provide facilities to edit the typescript files and to annotate 
     them easily.
iii) Know enough about the participating programs to arrive at
     uniform conventions for TYPE-IN (i.e. character editing, line 
     editing etc.); Develop uniform procedures for accessing help for
     any demonstration from anywhere in the interaction with that
     program.  This is an extension of (i).
 iv) Develop some ideas on having RUNNABLE typescripts, that is
     we need to be able to run the same demo as was done in an earlier
     session with input being taken from the typescript file and
     not by asking the user.  However retain the option of supplying
     the needed input from teletype thus overriding what is read from 
     the file.  Also need ways to incorporate meaningful default
     answers to what a demonstration program may ask the user.

It is anticipated that we may be able to do (i) for the upcoming 
workshop and possibly a part of (ii).  However, since the AIM workshop
is being conceived of as annual events, it makes sense to lay long-
range goals. Items (iii) and (iv) definitely fall into this category.
If you have comments please route them to <SRIDHARAN>.  Thanks.
-------