CSC 152 2004F, Class 43: Weekly Project Discussion (Week 11)

Admin:
* Kevin and Eric are nearing D's for participation.
* Goal for next week: Ready for integration
  * Overly-successful network group gets new work: Write RealWorld to file and read from file.  Note that you should look up "Serialization"
* Homework for tomorrow: Document sort

Overview:
* UI group presentation
* Questions
* People group presentation

/Detour: What is an abstract class?/

* Not very useful answers
  * Something vague
  * Something I intend to look up later
* What is an interface?
  * Outlines the methods you intend to implement later.
* What is a class?
  * Something that might implement an interface.
  * Definitions of methods and fields and constructors and that's about it
* Abstract class is somewhere between the two
  * May contain definitions of methods, fields, and constructors
  * May leave some methods declared (outlined) but not defined
* Why would an abstract class be useful for sorting?
public abstract class Sorter
{
	/**
	 * The comparator that determines the order in which
	 * stuff gets sorted.
	 */
	Comparator c;

	/**
	 * Sort stuff using the comparator that is part of this
	 * class.
	 */
} // abstract class Sorter

/Interface Group/

* Stuff is in /home/namaiang/CS152/project
* Try with
	export CLASSPATH="/home/namaiang/CS152:$CLASSPATH"
	ji project.ReadAndParseTester
* They need to add (real soon now)
  * look -- to find out everything in the room
  * examine OBJECT -- to learn about a particular object
* Need to see testing of the "broadcast" stuff
* What should the prompting be?  Will there always be a "type something now"?  What will the "type something now" read?
  * What if things are being broadcast?  That interferes.
  	What do you want to do?  Brad swings his foamy broadsword at the wall
  * PRINT INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE and assume people will learn
* Provide help!
* EVERYONE finds it irritating that the question and answer (or prompt and answer) are not on the same line.
* It would be nice if the password were not shown (may be hard)

/Issue to settle: Broadcasting/

Problem: WorldGroup wants to notify its "interface" (either NetworkServer or UserInterface) that a message must be "broadcast" to users.