This is related to the Workflow Management Project I'm coordinating
at UCT.
Any feedback welcome!
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CALL FOR SUGGESTIONS: An Active Forms Scripting Language
INTRODUCTION:
The Workflow Management Project is an attempt to produce a clean
suite of Internet protocols for secure and reliable business process
management - especially of distributed workgroups.
Part of that effort involves the creation of an "Active Forms System",
an open and extensible standard for "intelligent documents".
The "intelligence" of these active forms comes from a programmatic
component... which essentially will consist of a set of methods
written in a specialised scripting language.
The requirements we have defined for this scripting language are:
* a clean programmatic model (as few quirks as possible!)
* simplicity (for rapid adoption)
* object orientation (for reusability and scalability)
In addition we require the language specification to be available
in the public domain, and the source code for an existing implementation
to be available.
CURRENT DIRECTION:
At the moment we are leaning strongly towards Python, a language
developed at CWI in the Netherlands by Guido van Rossum. We have also
examined Tcl, REXX and Perl.
CALL FOR SUGGESTIONS:
If you have strong opinions as to which scripting language would make
the ideal base for us to work from, please send your suggestions to
marks@owlnet.co.za
CALL FOR HELP:
At the moment we have neither the resources nor the expertise to build
a full prototype Forms Browser. Essentially, this piece of software is
to the WMP what Mosaic is to the World Wide Web. The project would
involve:
* working with Mark Shuttleworth & Morgan Collett to finalise
the Active Forms System Design
* building a prototype Forms Browser on one of: Windows 3.1,
Mac, OS/2, Windows NT or X11.
* embedding Python (or whatever language we choose!) into the Forms
Browser to handle Forms Methods.
Any interested parties are welcome to contact us at the address given
below.
OTHER INFORMATION:
There is a mailing list for Workflow Management Project related
discussion. To subscribe send mail to listproc@owlnet.co.za with
no subject line and the words:
subscribe wmp your_name_here
in the body of the message.
All WMP documentation, including what we have for the Active Forms
System, can be found at:
http://www.owlnet.co.za/~marks/admp/
Finally, you can send mail to the project coordinators:
marks@owlnet.co.za (Mark Shuttleworth)
mcollett@cs.uct.ac.za (Morgan Collett)
Regards,
Mark Shuttleworth & Morgan Collett
The WMP Team
10 April 1995
-- Mark Shuttleworth