RE: Cyc KB

Josh Cohen (joshco@microsoft.com)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 10:55:57 -0800


one thing to look at is the Office Assistant from MS.
It does alot of the things you mention. For instance, the first
time you select an advanced feature, it pops up a bubble asking
if you want assistance and a few other context related tasks.
it also has a reasonable NLP for help.

Another neat thing is in NT5 (w2k), menus are dynamically
shuffled so that when you drop down a menu, only your commonly used
selections appear. To make the full menu show you need to hover a bit.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Long [mailto:dl@silcom.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 1999 10:42 PM
> To: fork@xent.ICS.uci.edu
> Subject: RE: Cyc KB
>
>
> >One of the requirements for Cyc (or any comparable project) is a
> >language that can be used by both humans and software
> systems to share a
> >conversation about the real world -- the "ontology" in Cyc terms.
>
> Forget about conversation; how about just the level of
> communication one has
> with horses, mules, working dogs, performing dolphins, etc.
> (good, do more
> of that / no, I didn't want that, try something else)?
>
> Is anyone aware of software systems that afford this style of
> interaction?
> Some KPT products offer a "give me something else" mode, and
> I think that
> QuickBooks silences the confirmation dialogs when doing a
> long sequence of
> modifications. Neither of those really go that far, but
> they're a step
> beyond rudimentary ^C/ESC handling...
>
> Of course, since we've generally switched over to machines
> instead of labor,
> perhaps consistency *is* very important, even when (as per
> the perl FAQ) one
> consistently gets worst-case behavior.
>
> Given suitable infinite-level undo, would you find proactive
> software tools
> helpful, or annoying?
>
> -Dave
>