## Parable as a Service

I recently replaced the *ika* scripting interface with *allegory*, a single interface that provides both scripting and interactive modes in a single file. I've taken advantage of this to add some new facilities that will be useful in the future.

One of these is the ability to save and reload a snapshot of the Parable environment. I've done the core element of saving before (with *apologue*), though reloading is new. The biggest issue is the size. I'm using JSON, which works, but its far from compact. with my work on allegory I enhanced this by adding gzip compression. this reduces the data size to a few kilobytes instead of 1+ megabytes. To keep this easy to transmit I'm also using base64 to encode the compressed results as a string. 

So what Ive done recently (while stuck in bed trying to recover from a flu) is implement a new *apologue*-based backend that takes and returns a Parable snapshot. So what I now have is a Parable as a Service thing that allows for at least potential interactivity over the network. 

I haven't tied this into *apologue* yet, but have a proof of concept as an implementation of the standard listener that uses the new backend code. It works pretty well. There is still a lot that I'd like to do before I begin work on adding support for this into *apologue*. I want to have a larger API for working on data in a snapshot so that I can optionally offload work to the server and keep the client aide lighter.

For those who would like to try this, the code will be hitting the repository in a day or two.

(As an aside, this does not represent a focus shift: I'm continuing to work on getting an offline Parable environment that can be folded into Apologue. But having a richer online one will be of benefit until this is ready.)