Customizing One's Own Interface Using English as Primary Language

Abstract

ASK, A Simple Knowledgeable System, is a total system for the structuring manipulation and communication of information. Its primary user interface is a dialect of English. In this interface, the user may work with texts, pictures and images, a l l integrated within the same semantic net data base. We concentrate here on the ASK System facilities f o r customizing the user's interface which are at a series of levels, from those immediately available to the user to those best exercised by the applications programmer. The user can extend his vocabulary, not only by new terms -- names and attributes, nouns and verbs -- but also by definitions. ASK includes two dialogue systems that are of particular importance for customizing the user's environment. The Dialogue Designing Dialogue is a complete natural language automatic programming system. The user can create his own mini-expert systems, so he can accomplish complex tasks by means of a simple dialogue. With some knowledge of programming, recursive calls, stacks, etc. provide powerful tools, all at the high level of anatural language dialogue. The Foreign Access Dialogue can be used to establish lines of communication to other, foreign, data bases, so that in answer to a single query, the system integrates data from the user's own data base and foreign data bases. No restriction is placed on these heterogeneous data bases other than their accessibility, possibly over phone lines, to the ASK system computer. Corresponding to each natural language context for user interaction, there is a meta-context for the applications programmer.. The central notion of meta-contexts is the rule of grammar and associated interpretive procedure. The applications programmer adds new capabilities by adding such rules, thus extending the range of resources at the fingertips of the user.