MS Agent Alternatives?
Unknown
I received an email today (below) from the MS Agent team announcing
that MS Agent will no longer be supported, starting with Windows 7,
and no new licenses will be issued.
Anyone know of alternatives, as similar as possible, to MS Agent?
Thanks,
Steve
--------------------------------------------------
We wanted to let current licensees know about changes to Microsoft®
Agent for Windows 7.
Microsoft has decided to discontinue development of Microsoft Agent
technologies. Beginning with Windows 7, Microsoft Agent will not be
included or supported in future versions of the Microsoft® Windows®
operating system. We encourage Microsoft Agent application developers
and redistributors to evaluate their activities in light of this
decision.
· Developers can still use the following resources for previous
versions of Windows:
o Microsoft Agent Core Components
o Merlin Character File
o Peedy Character File
o Genie Character File
o Robby Character File
· Microsoft will not offer new licenses or renewals.
· Microsoft will not update the Microsoft Agent components,
including:
o The “msagent.exe” runtime and libraries
o The characters Merlin, Genie, Peedy, and Robbo
o The Agent Character Editor
o All related Microsoft Agent software, tools, and documentation
· Windows 7 and later versions will not support development of
Microsoft Agent applications or characters.
· Microsoft resources will not be available to assist customers
in the investigation or resolution of issues for new or existing
deployments.
· The Microsoft Agent Web site will soon contain this
information only and the other pages will not be available for
viewing.
Remy Lebeau
<Steve> wrote in message news:ikjns496ltcs5dntg...@4ax.com...
> Anyone know of alternatives, as similar as possible, to MS Agent?
Cantoche's Living Actor (http://www.livingactor.com) is a good alternative.
If I ever have time to finish my MSAgent engine, and then MSAgent itself can
be revived as a public sector project (maybe open source, in light of
Microsoft's decision - not sure yet).
--
Remy Lebeau (TeamB)
Remy Lebeau
<Steve> wrote in message news:ikjns496ltcs5dntg...@4ax.com...
> I received an email today (below) from the MS Agent team announcing
> that MS Agent will no longer be supported, starting with Windows 7,
> and no new licenses will be issued.
Can you forward me that email, or at least the contact info from it? I have
a few questions for Microsoft.
--
Remy Lebeau (TeamB)
http://www.lebeausoftware.org
blaze young
day because I knew Microsoft didn't get it and having them for an
upstream provider seems to be like asking to be fondled roughly with a
mixture of sandpaper and vaseline.
Most of these are dead and buried in various hard drives somewhere
because I reached the point of apathy after the notion of Microsoft
sucking wore off, even though it is slightly renewed...
When i heard about this latest, final F.U. from Microsoft to the Agent
community, the notion of furnishing a replacement came to mind, but
the truth is, that's not a big priority at the moment, even though it
would be cool, life requires time and that time gets drained.
Regardless, here's a couple of thoughts...
1. It's pretty damn easy to replicate the draggable 'form',
transparent alpha, tray icon, overlay bitmap animation, and associated
dialogs with C#.NET, or maybe even mono with GTK, because winforms are
somewhat tricky to move over to linux sometimes.
2. Mutate the halfway XML format of the character into a full XML doc
so it can go on a site.
3. Ditch the custom / proprietary / rumpranging ACS / ACF / ACA
formats and make something that can just load bitmaps off the web or
local, be they bmp, gif, or png.
4. As cool as it was that there was some tight compression in the
images, it's not as fundamental now as it previously was.
5. a ZIP file with the images and the XML character would be more than
adequate for an acs replacement
6. I have a vb based speech engine somewhere, but it's not a prosodic
SAPI 4 wonder engine. I was trying to figure out the whole scheme of
doing the lip syncing viseme madness, but whatever. In my experiments
I discovered that humans really don't pay attention, so if the lip
sync is wrong or the wrong mouth frame or whatever, it's not as
critical. I assume there are still sapi engines one can have fun with
under .NET, I sorta stopped caring about that.
7. the word balloon, ha, as if that's difficult to do... there's a
million examples
8. the whole thing could probably be done as one assembly and
maneuvered to be globally accessible, with a Dictionary of characters
that are loaded and unloaded and so on...
9. There are some ways to do the whole 'works with javascript'
maneuver, but really, there are better ways to make a technology like
this in such a way as to make it happier to use and program.
10. well, getting the bitmaps out of the compiled characters would be
somewhat of a nuisance because there aren't any automated tools,
because I stopped caring and I don't think anyone else really looked
too deep or released information about the format.
11. you'd lose the ability to edit them unless someone was going to
create a new character editor.
12. The new happy asynchronous callback scheme of .NET is sorta
basically the same design as the RequestCompleted maneuver Agent does,
so it would not represent a lot of difficult coding to be able to kick
off animation threads into a queue and then play them at the right
time.
13. there was a lot of other little tricks and traps to Agent that
really don't matter all that much, like being able to coordinate them
with ASF and stuff, I don't know if it would matter to reproduce them.
All in all, I think this would be something that an opensource group
would take 2-6 months to get together, as long as backward
compatibility wasn't an issue. Replacing the basic premise of Agent
with something that is better suited and happier and doesn't stink of
the Microsoft ruination is the kinder, gentler path, even though they
deserve to be beaten over the head on multiple occasions for basically
shafting THE ENTIRE WORLD.
If anyone wants this sort of thing done it's not out of the question
except for me to mangle it myself I would need to arrange to go into a
dark place with the internet, quiet, and nonstop typeathon, and the
options for doing that become limited in the great AIG age.
I'll think about it.
Remy Lebeau
"blaze young" <campi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:abd136ca-2e80-4eae...@v1g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> 2. Mutate the halfway XML format of the character into a full XML doc
> so it can go on a site.
MSAgent never used a "halfway XML" format to begin with. It is completely
binary and proprietary.
> 3. Ditch the custom / proprietary / rumpranging ACS / ACF / ACA
> formats and make something that can just load bitmaps off the web or
> local, be they bmp, gif, or png.
One of the key featurs of MSAgent is that it reduces image overhead by
eliminating duplicate pixels and allowing small overlays to be swapped
in/out of larger images for small chances between frames.
> 10. well, getting the bitmaps out of the compiled characters would be
> somewhat of a nuisance because there aren't any automated tools
No public ones, anyway.
> I don't think anyone else really looked too deep
I did.
> or released information about the format.
Not yet, but only because I ran out of free time to work on it. I have the
technical specs on the formats, but have not released everything publically
yet.
> 11. you'd lose the ability to edit them unless someone was going
> to create a new character editor.
That is still on my TODO list.
--
Remy Lebeau (TeamB)
Scott T
> 2. Mutate the halfway XML format of the character into a full XML doc
> so it can go on a site.
MSAgent never used a "halfway XML" format to begin with. It is
completely
binary and proprietary.
no kidding. . . .Sheesh, man. The point flew straight over your head.
There was a group endeavor at one point that created an XML metadata
format for publicly available characters that didn't require loading an
ACF
to determine the properties of the characters and allowed a discovery
of publicly available characters.
In the absence of MSAgent, how would you propose describing this
metadata? Tea leaves?
When MS boned us on ACF format, it became irrelevant, since it forced
EVERY SINGLE ACF CHARACTER to throw up a security dialog.
Not once per domain, but ONCE PER CHARACTER. Ugly and practically
totally debilitating.
IE lets you load javascript and images from any arbitrary domain without
dialogs,
but not cute talking animals. . .
> 3. Ditch the custom / proprietary / rumpranging ACS / ACF / ACA
> formats and make something that can just load bitmaps off the web or
> local, be they bmp, gif, or png.
One of the key featurs of MSAgent is that it reduces image overhead by
eliminating duplicate pixels and allowing small overlays to be swapped
in/out of larger images for small chances between frames.
Big deal. It's being killed. No matter the original genius.
> 10. well, getting the bitmaps out of the compiled characters would be
> somewhat of a nuisance because there aren't any automated tools
No public ones, anyway.
well, now's your last chance there, Mr. Vaporware.
> I don't think anyone else really looked too deep
I did.
Whole lot of good it did anyone. You've been peddling that same line
for years.
> or released information about the format.
Not yet, but only because I ran out of free time to work on it. I have
the
technical specs on the formats, but have not released everything
publically
yet.
Without a player, the format is DEAD.
> 11. you'd lose the ability to edit them unless someone was going
> to create a new character editor.
That is still on my TODO list.
Since what? 1999? Yes, we all know about all your grand schemes that
have yielded squat. Scratch it off your list. Don't bother. We'll all
be as
dead as MSAgent by the time anything of substance comes true from
your plans, endlessly recounted for us as if it will ever amount to
anything.
Give it up Remy. You once predicted the demise of MSAgent, and it
didn't
happen. NOW, it is happening and you can't seem to face it.
Oh, and incidentally enough, this newsgroup is still here.
While I appreciate that you have been the steadiest follower of all
things
MSAgent, here and all over the web, I fear you may have discouraged
as many as you have helped.
Get with the program, dude.
--
ScottT (Team MSAgent)
CinSoft
The first cut of our Agent runtime for Windows 7 is now available. It's just
the first cut, but it can be used for testing agent apps. We're interested
in feedback.
It's called Double Agent and its available at
http://www.cinnamonsoftware.com/double_agent.htm
We got it posted just in time for vacation. I'll be out of touch for a
couple of weeks but will pick this back up in mid-July.
Don Fehr
Cinnamon Software Inc.
Cin...@videotron.ca
tuxplorer
on Windows 7 meaning can Office assistant run with this runtime?