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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Easier Searching in KDE
From:       Jonathan Gardner <jgardner () jonathangardner ! net>
Date:       2004-06-04 0:35:22
Message-ID: 200406031735.22198.jgardner () jonathangardner ! net
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On Saturday 22 May 2004 09:56 pm, Jamethiel Knorth wrote:
> I was brainstorming about how to better work searching into the
> environment, and I had a few ideas. As is my way while brainstorming, my
> thoughts coalesced into a large variety of mock-ups and a webpage. I'm
> particularly hoping for people to give any comments about the file
> selection dialog before I ask about this on a development list.
>
> You can look at the full thing at:
>
> http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/designs/ubiquitous_searching/index.htm
>l
>

Doing a bit of thinking, I have often thought that we should begin 
engineering a natural language approach to our systems. This ties in with 
searching, so bear with me. What sparked me off was the small section on 
"natural language searching".

Currently, some work is being done on "AI" systems that merely match 
patterns and respond appropriately. See 
"A.L.I.C.E." (http://www.alicebot.org). The author of ALICE has suggested 
that it could be used for help systems or diagnosing problems.

Why can't we have the same thing in KDE? For instance, a user can bring up a 
dialog interface, and type:

	"How do I send an email?"

The computer would respond:

	"Use KMail."

I know this reeks of Clippy from Microsoft, but I am sure we can do a better 
job by having it give relevant results and not be so intrusive. Getting rid 
of the comic book dancing avatar is a good idea as well.

The biggest hurdle to implementing this is not the AI program - that is 
already done. It is the data file the program will use. I have a good way 
to handle this. We can code as a community the data file. We can have users 
submit questions they have that they got the wrong answer for and then 
adjust the code for the community. We can have the system set up so that 
upgrading the AI is as easy as downloading a new data set.

Thoughts? Ideas?

-- 
Jonathan Gardner
jgardner@jonathangardner.net
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