On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 12:48:07AM -0800, Mark Rafn wrote:
> > I am only talking about the instance of a web app which, though it
> > exists as a series of discrete scripts that communicate with the user
> > through a stateless HTTP connection, presents a unified "interactive
> > session".
> Sure, but why limit it to web apps? Almost all apps communicate with the
> user in some manner. How is delivering a blob of HTML to a renderer in
> response to a query any different from delivering a blob of text to a
> logfile watcher in response to a syslog() call? Or delivering email to a
> user by writing some files in response to a cron invocation?
interactive
<programming> A term describing a program whose input and
output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the
user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run.
The interaction with the user is usually conducted through
either a text-based interface or a {graphical user interface}.
Other kinds of interface, e.g. using {speech recognition}
and/or {speech synthesis}, are also possible.
I am not interacting with syslogd when it writes to a log file. I am not
interacting with cron when it sends me email. These examples lack the
critical feature of *interleaving*. However, I do interact with a
website.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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