[pandorabots-general] General Tag Question.

[Brian Hoecht]

AIML has a very specific matching algorithm.

Exact pattern matches come first

Then wildcard pattern matches.

That matches are just a special form of the above designed to help the bot 
continue a conversation a level or two deep.

Topic is the crudest form of all + what is used the least (in what I have 
seen from implementations).  In your example you would need to:

Build a number of Topic tags (say for the topic "Fruit") surrounding 
wildcard pattern matches for _ banana *, * banana *, * banana, banana * and 
then have a root pattern for * within the topic tag which holds the 
randomized responses to the general topic you wish to have provided as the 
response.

This is a structural design philosophy which you would need to plan for from 
the outset.  My experience is the bot really doesn't have great context for 
its responses when used this way, but they can provide a response that can 
be at least somewhat relevant to the latest inquiry context.

>From a practical point of view in trying to maintain the "Illusion of 
Intelligence" I find it better to redirect by changing the subject or having 
the most basic *, *, * (pattern, that, topic) able to be entertaining + 
studying the user inputs which triggered the category.

There are other practical implementation tips such as building up decent 
master question response categories around yes, no, maybe and that 
categories.

If you'd like a quick start + don't have much experience with AIML yet have 
a reasonable budget, I'd encourage you to buy the SuperBot to see ALICE's 
top 1,000 categories.

Happy New Year and Good Luck!

Brian E. Hoecht

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" - Confucius.




>From: Dekadens <dekadens at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: pandorabots-general at list.pandorabots.com
>To: pandorabots-general at list.pandorabots.com
>Subject: [pandorabots-general] General Tag Question.
>Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 20:23:51 -0500
>
>Greetings.
>
>Can anybody please instruct me as to the propper use of the <topic
>name="whatever"> tag?
>
>What I'm trying to do is to be able to have my bot generate an output
>from a "specific" AMIL file, not necessarily because I have duplicate
>"template" or "that" tags, but only because I want the output to come
>from an AIML file of my choice.
>
>For example, let's say that the client mentions something about
>"banannas". I might have some random categories scattered throughout
>ALL my AIML files that COULD generate a good reply,   but say I have
>an AIML file called "fruit salad" and I want the bot to select a match
>from categories in THAT specific file only.
>
>Is the "topic" tags the only way to do this or is there another way?
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Joe
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