Edward, Matt, Christopher, Thank you all. I have found this exchange to be very usefull.
The road map that Matt provides for V2 is very helpful and helps differentiate the two efforts. It also encourages me to subscribe to the developers list to get a better sense of how the project is evolving. The two pieces missing from that discussion is a sense of timeline and backwards compatability. Kepler 1.0.0 was released in May 2008? When will we likely see 2.0.0 (May 2010?). Will all workflows developed under 1.0.0 work unmodified under 2.0.0? Chistopher decribes the procedures for adding Ptolemy II actors and methods to Kepler. Also very helpful (and something I will certainly be doing in the near future). But it does raise an interesting question. Clearly, the Kepler team is making some decisions about which elements of Ptolemy II merit a priori inclusion in a user interface for "scientific workflows" whereas others do not. I must admit that I find this differentiation to be confusing. Is there an explicit set of criteria? Edward makes the distinction between a building and its foundation. So perhaps I can draw the following analogy. Potelemy II is to Kepler as is Gecko to Firefox. Rather obvious now that I look at it, but perhaps a point that could me made more clearly in the 2.0.0 documentation. I'm off to investigate some of the specifics. That probably means silence from me for at least a few days. -- Tom
