[alicebot-archcomm] input and that

[Dr. Richard S. Wallace]

One of the tricky issues here is that the substitutions are many-one
(non-invertible) mappings.  For instance all of the client inputs

I'm Mr. Smith.
I'm Mr Smith.
I'm Mr. Smith...
I'm MR Smith.

would all map to the same string by the deperiodization subs.

The normalization substition is "even more" many-one, if you get my meaning.

The simplest solution would be to agree that <input/> and <that/> always
return the normalized form, and it is up the Botmaster to prettify the
output with <uppercase>, <lowercase>, <formal>, and <capitalize>.

Another solution might be to remember the original form of each sentence,
but this is tricky with deperiodization, because the substitution occurs
before the sentence-splitting.

Another solution would be to implement a "denormalize" substitution, which
would make a "best guess" at restoring the original input.   Even more
generally, there could be a whole post-processing substitution stage where
the botmaster can correct a variety of grammatical mistakes the robot makes.

Rich


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Foderaro" <jkf@franz.com>
To: <alicebot-archcomm@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 7:39 AM
Subject: [alicebot-archcomm] input and that


>
> Section 7.1.3 of
> http://www.alicebot.org/TR/2001/WD-aiml/
>
> says:
>     The input element tells the AIML interpreter that it should
>     substitute the contents of a previous user input.
>
>
> my question is: is this the exact input the user provided or is
> is the input after substitution?
>
> For example, given:
>         I'm Mr. Smith
> is <input> going to return
>
>         I'm Mr. Smith
> or
>         I am Mr Smith
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  I've got the same question of <that> in section 7.1.2,
> should <that> return bot output or the result of doing
> substitution over bot output.
>
>
>
> The reason that I believe that substitution is important for
> these elements is that the elements specify a particular
> sentence of the input or reply and substitution is used
> to remove characters that would otherwise cause the sentence
> to be broken prematurely.   Now with a bit of programming
> work you could do the substitutions, break the string
> into sentences and then undo the substitutions thus giving
> the raw user input or bot output.  Is this what should be done?
>
>
>
> -john foderaro
>
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