gary@rochester.UUCP (02/22/85)
From: Gary Cottrell <gary>
SEMINAR
Saturday, 23 February 1985
55 Cottage St.
9:00 p.m.
Speaker
Garrison W. Cottrell
University of Cottage Street
Department of Dog Science
"_P_r_o_g_r_a_m_m_i_n_g _t_h_e _U_s_e_r-_F_r_i_e_n_d_l_y _D_o_g"
A current hot research topic is building user-friendly
interfaces to computer systems. One of the techniques of this
work is to design so-called "habitable subsets" of natural
language that in many cases allow the naive user to begin
productively using the system with little instruction. In this
work, we will show that these techniques, combined with results
from connectionist dog modelling, can be transferred to the ever
growing field of building user-friendly dogs. While the hardware
in this case is an example of a VRISC (Very Reduced Instruction
Set) computer, we will show that it is still possible to program
easily-learned high level commands.
Since it has been shown that in working with such machines,
the user has to do much of the computation of appropriate command
contexts (New Directions in Connectionist Dog Modelling, Cottrell
84), it is important to use English commands that make sense with
respect to the intended effect. For example, many previous
researchers have advocated the use of such commands as "Go on"
(How to Live with Three Dobermans, Kester 84) or "Go play" (Being
Mellow with Your Dog, Ose 73) to mean "Go lie down and quit
bothering me." The obvious mismatch here between the intent and
the usual meaning of "Go on" (i.e., _c_o_n_t_i_n_u_e) makes it difficult
for new users of the system to adapt to the command language. A
more ergonomically-designed command is "Scram." The command
matches the intent, and "go" is saved for more appropriate
contexts.
The reasons for the present sad state of affairs in most dog
programming systems can be traced to the use of outmoded command
languages and archaic beliefs about the capacities of the dog.
On the first point, many so called "experts" still advocate the
use of "heel" to mean "walk beside me." In this case, there is a
double mismatch: First with the hardware, which as everyone
knows, has no heel; and second with the semantics of the English
word "heel", which might better be used with respect to the male
dog's behavior towards female dogs. The New Age dog programmer
uses the much more natural command "Walk with Me." Addressing the
second point, many dog programmers believe that they have
accomplished much more than is possible with these crude
machines. It has long been known to those on the forefront of
this field (Larson, 84) that such baroque commands strings as:
"Now, JellyBean, you stay here, I have to go to a party and you
can't come. Be a good boy, JellyBean!" are actually interpreted
by the machine as: "blah JellyBean blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
JellyBean," which is certainly not what the user intended. We
will have a demonstration system at the talk employing our
interface, including such useful commands as "Call the Elevator",
"Wag your tail", and "Eat that dog food."
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