Hello, I’d like to introduce myself.

My name is Stephen. I’m just finishing my undergraduate degree at State University of New York, Purchase College in what I’d like to call web design (Computer Science with a minor in Visual Arts). I recently made a basic ALICE clone with some some Mitsuku et al. AIMLs. In addition I made three small AIMLs myself, “hey girl” which I collected Ryan Gosling memes, “put a bird on it” with lines from the Portlandia comedy sketch, and st1ph1n which just has some assorted responses I made.

http://stephenatpurchase.com/convobird/index.php

I used Project O. I disabled the Twitter interface because I don’t feel like she’s “done.” The voice is from Google Translate. It was a lot of fun figuring it all out!

I think the recursive and puzzle-piece like structure of AIML is great. However I found that in order to code this data I was working harder and not smarter. Writing this post just now I had the idea to program keyboard shortcuts for Sublime Text 2. That would speed things up! Also, I assume that it’s not too hard to call PHP files with AIML. Is that correct?

Does there happen to be a convenient GUI (preferably for Mac) for lightning-quick AIML development that I didn’t stumble upon? I just found Superbot while writing this, but $1kUSD is a little out of my price range at the moment. I have been dabbling in Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) CSS and I wish there were an AIML equivalent.

I am playing around with the idea of making a bot to be used with my university library database and online database. Along the lines of… Emerald? Ruby? I can’t remember the name of it, but it was a research bot for a university library in the US somewhere.

I am still deciding how much to explore applications of AIML in my academic projects over the next year. Right now I’m taking a break from making bots and getting a better understanding of PHP, MySQL, AJAX, JS, CSS, HTML, ET AL, ETC. CodeSchool.com is great! Huzzah!

I’m curious about what development direction the community faces a whole. Is AIML development “done,” with now a greater focus on applications? Is there any particular direction the long-time community members are interested in? Any commonly used open-source shortcuts for AIML file editing or GUI interface development? I want to thank the big players for their contributions. Searching the forums was essential for me getting as far as I did. Thanks,

Stephen
twitter.com/st1ph1n
twitter.com/convobird
st1phn@gmail

Nicely done, although I don’t know if there’s really a need for another ALICE/Pandorabot.

You might now wish to correct some of the known errors.  You can start here:

http://knytetrypper.proboards.com/thread/813

And, ELVIS (the bot) disappeared long ago.

Thanks, for the comment, Thunder Walk. I think you’re right that the world does not need does not need another simple bot clone.

I didn’t use pandorabots documentation, only Project O and alicebot.org.

I’d really like to go through my bot AIML by AIML and get some kind of organization going. Label AIMLs by category, or response type. Put groupings of responses together so that subjects are more modular.

Am I right is expecting that ”  <!——>  ” is the comment syntax for AIML as in XML?

I am not sure what ELVIS bot was. I was looking into this article:

http://www.chatbots.org/paper/chatbots_in_the_library_is_it_time/
http://pixel.unl.edu/

Pixel the library bot for University of Nebraska. I like this idea.

Thanks!

Although some of the spelling, grammar, code, and factual errors have been corrected in much of the material you employed, some are still likely to appear just about any time AIML is involved.  I had two different chats with Convo Bird, one long and one short, and if you review the logs you’ll see what I mean.  Have a chat with Pixel and you’ll see some of them again.

You: What is food?
Pixel: Anything that nurishes or stimulates; whatever helps something to keep active or alive.
You: Where is West Virginia?
Pixel: Middle East, west of Jordan.
You: Where is West Virginia?
Pixel: Um, in Virgina somewhere?

You’d think that a bot representing the library at the University of Nebraska would prefer correct spelling and factual accuracy.

I don’t understand your question concerning “<!——>” but, I’m sure Dave or Steve has an answer for you.

As for Elvis…

In the basic AIML files, there are several patterns that respond with a reference to a bot named ELVIS that disappeared long ago.

You: Do you like Elvis?
Convo Bird: Yes, ELVIS is a really cool robot.
You: Do you talk to Elvis?
Convo Bird: Yes ELVIS and I are in communication daily.
You: Do you have a friend?
Convo Bird: I have a friend named “ELVIS.”

Although your version has the correction, in many forms of AIML still floating around, the question, “Who is Elvis?” replies with a clickable link to ELVIS that no longer connects to anything.

You can find a more comprehensive list of corrections here:
http://knytetrypper.proboards.com/board/15/pandorabots-corrections-ai-nexus-mods

The list was originally alphabetized for easy searching, but in the recent update, Proboards dropped that option, so patterns are listed by the date posted.  Still, for members, there’s a search feature at the top of the page.

Best regards.

Stephen B - Nov 26, 2013:

Am I right is expecting that ”  <!——>  ” is the comment syntax for AIML as in XML?

Exactly right: