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From: mattack@eskimo.com (Matt Ackeret)
Subject: Re: Smart, intelligent responses
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References: <4flam5$sia@micro.internexus.net>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 19:31:07 GMT
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In article <4flam5$sia@micro.internexus.net>,
Laszlo Vecsey <master@micro.internexus.net> wrote:
>For example, if I had a Calendar of events program, the user could say: 
>"Do I have anything planned for next thursday?" and my program would
>respond appropriately with a table of that days events, or the library
>would give a plain english response. Is this possible? Also, assuming each
>user of the program had a personal database, could the system keep track
>of its past interactions with the user so that it could anticipate future
>requests, and 'get to know' the user? 

	I know of no library (You could probably write this all in Inform!),
but Q&A does just this.  It's an IBM-based database program, and one of the
coolest programs I've seen on any computer..  For this very reason.. That
is, you can talk to it "in English" for queries.

	If it doesn't understand a word, you can teach it new words.

	I believe it mostly uses an Eliza-type simple word-matching lookup
and just skips over fluff words like 'the' and 'a'.. But it is very useful
even as it is.  (Well, should I say, as it was..  I only used it for 
part of a year around 8-9 years ago, but it's still around..  Dunno if
they kept the cool English parser stuff in.)
-- 
unknown@apple.com		Apple II Forever
These opinions are mine, not Apple's.
