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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Easier Searching in KDE
From:       "Jamethiel Knorth" <jamethknorth () hotmail ! com>
Date:       2004-06-04 16:32:47
Message-ID: BAY7-F19kHAXEy4fQbP00056552 () hotmail ! com
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>From: Dik Takken <D.H.J.Takken@phys.uu.nl>
>Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 12:33:00 +0200 (CEST)
>
>On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Jonathan Gardner wrote:
>
>>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".
>
><snap>
>
>>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."
>>
>
>Yes we could have this in KDE, but someone will have to set up a 
>proof-of-concept, using a sample knowledge database that contains some info 
>about KDE applications for example. If it turns out that it is not too 
>difficult to create a simple concept database that allows you to have a 
>nice chat with ALICE about KDE, you could move on and create the real 
>knowledge database. Of course, we will also replace Alice with Konqi 
>talking back to you. :)
>
>So, we need to find someone who has some knowledge about ALICE and is 
>willing to create a simple proof-of-concept application.

We don't need to use something like ALICE. The system would probably benefit 
more from a grammar parsing system. This is what GNOME Storage [1] uses, 
depending on a Head-Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) parser [2] and a set of 
Grammar Rules [3]. I would say that GNOME Storage already qualifies as a 
proof of concept, presuming it works as well as the page and its screenshots 
imply.

Also, this isn't as useful in most search areas. It is great when everything 
on the system is well tracked in a single database, but doesn't work so well 
if the database is unreliable. This makes it great for querying the help 
system, the configuration system, the menu, or anything else that is 
entirely controlled. However, it is far less useful when just searching for 
files according to their names.

[1] http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/
[2] http://hpsg.stanford.edu/
[3] http://lingo.stanford.edu/erg.html

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