Hi,
Your examples are quite easy to read.  I’ll do some reading on Boost to see about this capability. On the other hand it would be a relatively easy class to create….I think.

*Update*
I had a very successful day creating and refining various string management functions incorporating Boost. 

Wrote a couple of functions that would analyze a text file (history of George Washington) and eliminate the 500 most common words. It left a list of words that are not so common. The goal is to collect context keywords so the context might be described.

Worked unsuccessfully at finding an easy to use XML reader for C++.  I’ve got a few more links to try tomorrow.

Regards,
Chuck

On the XML reader for C++. I asked a friend of mine:

Xerces XML Parser

http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/

SAX (Streaming) (schijnt ook in xerces te zitten)

http://sax.sourceforge.net/

Stax (XML Pull Parsers)

http://woodstox.codehaus.org/

http://expat.sourceforge.net/

Erwin,
Thanks for the links. I did spend a good couple of hours with xerces ... I learned I’m not smart enough. =)

I will investigate the other links you’ve referenced.  Thanks again.

Chuck

*Update*
I’ve actually been practicing with regular expressions in a VB app I’m constructing to automatically surf ‘craigslist’ in search of stuff. I had truly forgotten about the true power of these gems from my PERL experience a very long time ago.  I need to increase my skill at constructing these patterns in order to beef of Walter’s capability of parsing data.

In fact, based upon Nathan’s suggestion (in another thread) for a test of AI I would like Walter to respond to both a single sentence and multiple paragraphs of input.  I’ll think this through a bit.

In addition to this side project I’m building a VBA class at work to analyze a range of unspecified data.  I’m hoping any insights learned will allow me to rework Walter’s math and logic processing abilities.

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck, ever thought about making your chatbot completely open source? Others can add to add it.That will be really powerful…

Hi Erwin,
I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.  I’m a bit selfish I admit in the design and framework development phase. However once its functioning and being testing by others I can judge the response…and decide then. I can work up a detailed spec, standards, and a process for other coders.

I’ve been exploring the BOOST library ‘Parser’ which allows me to design a scripting language for the chatbot engine.  I believe this may provide a way for users to add to the program in a meaningful way…if they are not hard core programmers.

Another topic… regarding emotional input to enhance NLP, I was editing about 40 songs today for my game program (due in 9 days). I’m using a free program called “Audacity” to open the mp3 files. There is a nice graphical representation of the songs. It shows amplitude over time.  It’s interesting to look at the song ‘patterns’. Anyhow, I wonder how to build an ‘emotion’ module that responds to music…or in this case listening (reading) the data at normal speed.  I’m certain there is some research involving music appreciation and software.  This is a topic that must way for another time.

Regards,
Chuck

Chuck Bolin - Aug 21, 2010:

Anyhow, I wonder how to build an ‘emotion’ module that responds to music…or in this case listening (reading) the data at normal speed.  I’m certain there is some research involving music appreciation and software.  This is a topic that must way for another time.

This absolute exists. I’ve seen so much research on music during the IVA conference. However, don’t know where to start. The coming up ‘research section’ on Chatbots.org might help, but it’s not there and even in beta, I can’t use the search (we need to crawl journals first). As soon as I have more info, I’ll contact you right away.

Hi Everyone,
As some of you know I’ve had to devote a lot of resources into a few projects.  What’s interesting is that I’ve had to develop techniques that may all be applied to my development of Walter.

* Computer game entry (due in 5 days).  Each level has tiles that are associated with a 5 to 15 second music clip. The goal is to find the four related pieces and drag them to the assembly area. I’m using my latest C++ wrapper for the BASS sound library. The sound has 3D coordinates and the sounds move from speaker to speaker.  I would like to add sound to Walter’s world one day.

* Craigslist program is all about using an app to search any/some/all craigslist sites for stuff.  In addition to the user interface features that make it very easy to use I’m working with ‘regular expressions’.  The program scrapes web pages.  Walter will ultimately be able to surf the internet…page scraping is a must with an API. This is being written in VB6.

*I’m building an Excel Manager Scripting engine using VBA in Excel.  For those of you who have done much with VBA it’s a ‘heck of’ a language.  The user loads in a list of Excel files and runs scripts to automatically do all sorts of stuff. We live in an Excel rich environment and this will make is much easier to process 400 files…no more manual ops. =)
The scripting engine, syntax checking, and parsing is an important concept to allow an easier way of feeding Walter data.

I’ll return to Walter next week.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Regards,
Chuck

Wow, Chuck! It seems that you’ve been a bit busy!

Personally, I’d be interested in the VB page scraper. I have on my “To do” list a project for implementing a PHP version into Morti’s functions, but it’s quite a ways down that list, at this point.

Best of luck to you and your game submission. I have great faith that you’ll do well in the competition.

Just so you know, when you have time, there are a couple of other threads that you may find interesting, as they deal with programs written in C, and we all agree so far that you’re our “resident expert” in that area. No hurry, though.

Welcome back Chuck ! 

I also think web scraping is a great idea for a bot.  The ultimate search engine, naturual language query !!

Chuck Bolin - Sep 2, 2010:

*I’m building an Excel Manager Scripting engine using VBA in Excel.  For those of you who have done much with VBA it’s a ‘heck of’ a language.  The user loads in a list of Excel files and runs scripts to automatically do all sorts of stuff. We live in an Excel rich environment and this will make is much easier to process 400 files…no more manual ops. =)

Welcome back Chuck! I have been busy as well the last couple of days. Now back to Chatbots.org, the new upcoming versions and the animation forum (my posting on this unfortunately got lost, I’ll write a new one next week).

About the quote above: yes, I’ve experience with VBA for Excel. Probably not as experienced as you, but it worked quite well. I built an application of GE (Dutch offices) in 1998 (wow, that’s a while agoo… :-s ))  Quite powerful indeed.

But I’m wondering what the benefit is for you to use Excel for a chatbot. Excel is really limited, structured data etc. And scripting can be done anywhere with databases. What’s the advantage of using Excel?

Hi,
I’m looking to catching up in the other threads. I always learn a lot while surfing chat bots.

Erwin,
What is the advantage of using Excel?  Great question. I’ll give you my thoughts. I’m not referring to ‘recording and using’ macros. I’m talking about using the programming language and a significant amount if its capabilities.

* Rapid development and testing of chatting concepts…if you know VBA =)

* BASIC based language…has gotta be the simplest to learn.  VBA is very similar to VB6…one of the most used languages to date…if I recall my facts. It is easier and more intuitive (IMHO) than C++, C#, Perl, VB.net, etc.

* Numerous flat database tables in a single workbook….limited only by PC RAM. A complete AIML stimulus-response database (45000+) may be placed into a single sheet (Excel 2003 supports 65536 rows and 256 columns). No need to know how to access various file types….just use the tables.

* Easy to add user interface (forms, buttons, list boxes, scrollbars, etc.)

* Easy to create unique classes (with properties and methods).

* Extended with Win32 functions (over 600+ operating system functions).

* Easy to look up and parse data.

* Can be extended easily with other libraries and controls:
  - Supports regular expressions and pattern matching (VBScript)
  - Internet access…downloading pages easily.
  - XML reading/writing.
  - Access to most databases via the ADO.
  - Excellent file management capabilities with the file system object.
  - Timers (Win32)
  - Accesses Windows operating system and other Windows programs.
  - Add voice (TextToSpeech)

* Plenty of documentation available…to do just about anything in VBA.

* Easy to build a scripting language to store learned procedures and knowledge.

* Code runs quickly.

I believe Excel/VBA has all the components to build a ‘proof of concept’ app or a full-blown chat bot.  In fact, I’ve thought a lot about doing that this year to develop and test various techniques.  With a bit of cajoling I might built a VBA chat bot this year…as a test platform. =)

Things I can not do?  I can’t (don’t know if possible) how to create a Singleton class or create multi-threaded processes.  I can simulate multi-threaded processes by having a different workbook in a different ‘instance’ of Excel working on various aspects of the same problem.

Regards,
Chuck

ok, sounds fair. Thanks for the extensive explanation!!

Have you considered to use VB in combination with an MS Access database? In 1998 (sorry for my outdated knowledge), I used an ODBC connection to connect VB and MS Access. The advantage was that it was not really difficult to port the database to a server based SQL database such as SQL server (I don’t think MySQL existed these days).

*UPDATE*
I’ve finished my game programming entry…finally. I stayed up all night. My wife tested and I noticed a few buggy bits…but it seemed playable. http://games.chuckbolin.com/gc17/gc17_chuck.zip  It’s a 56MB download. If you love music then you might like this. The goal is to sort through all sorts of song bits, and pull 4 together that go together.
Here’s an earlier screen shot. http://games.chuckbolin.com/gc17/screen6.jpg  I hope to show Walter’s top-down 2D world in the future.

Now I need to clear my craigs list searching program off of my to do list. It needs timing and history information.  It utilizes page scraping code and regular expressions.

I like to think that these programs are tiny steps to build Walter…or a series of distractions. =)

Hi Erwin,
I can connect to an Access database or to SQL server. The supporting VBA/DB infrastructure isn’t so difficult. It can be setup with some effort.

However, it’s kinda like having a robot/android that has functional legs, balance detection, speech,vision, and hearing. If you pulled one out of a large box…and it had absolutely no programming. What good would the bot be…other than impressing geeky friends. =)

I thought VBA would be nice as a way to get up to speed quickly so one could experiment with software techniques and methodologies related to chat bots.

Regards,
Chuck

Oh, boy! A new time-waster for my morning routine!

I rather enjoyed playing your game, Chuck. I found it to be challenging, and look forward to playing it some more. Well done, and best of luck in the contest!