RE: HALManager idea ?

[John B]

> I noticed that all the scripts that are written are VBScript based.
I'm
> assuming this was chosen for a number of reasons; one was probably
> familiarity for the authors and another, I'm thinking, is that you've
> got a parser "for free" given the app is written in VB.

The MS Script control (ActiveX) is used to do the script parsing/execution
on
the server - it's basically a Windows Script Host interpreter that you can
embed
into an application.
It was chosen on the grounds that VBScript is one of the most common
scripting
languages amongst Windows users, and there were no easy alternatives.

> Is this indeed the case ? If so, do you have any thoughts on what this
> means for platforms w/o VB support ?

As Ian says, this was one of the main reasons for developing Determinators.
Basically a determinator is just a set of conditions and actions,
represented in
an XML file.
The manager provides a GUI for editing/creating determinators, with the
help of
the plug-ins written by device vendors.
It then uploads these XML files to the server via XHCP.
The server processes the determinators based on incoming xPL messages,
timed
events, changes in globals etc.

> It probably means we'd (I'd) need to write VBScript parser for the
> alternate HALManager..... (eek, big eek, very big EEK!)

Not at all - all the hard work is done server side.
All you need (again as Ian points out) is a text editor.
Now, if you want to make that text editor do fancy things, like syntax
checking,
then that would be very cool, but it's certainly not a requirement.

You can use the XHCP "CAPABILITIES" command to determine whether
the server
you're connected to supports scripting, and if so, which language does it
use.

HTH,

John