The Dialogue Designing Dialogue System

Abstract

This thesis presents an interactive system, the Dialogue Designing Dialogue System, that integrates natural language programming of user dialogues with a natural language system, the ASK system. This interactive system satisfies the basic criteria of a general programming language. The system presented in this thesis may be referred to as a "meta-dialogue" system. Using this meta-dialogue, the user implements domain specific dialogues which he and others can then use, providing highly succinct and efficient interfaces for interaction with the computer. The system combines the use of a syntax-directed and a semantic-directed system, which gives the user flexibility in specifying additional capabilities, and thus in turn gives the system itself a much broader domain of application. Further, the system integrates natural language programming, dialogue directed user interface, underlying data base, and text handling capabilities, so that it does not require users to have programming background in order to establish an application system for themselves.