Betty – English-like interface for the command line • Hacker News Board

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#11

Post by omarhegazy » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:15 AM UTC

Really interesting program, although, as Andrew has said, seems kinda limited. That's not your fault at all; any early project will seem limited in scope. Given some popularity and extra effort, something like this could be the Siri of the command line.

Which gets me thinking -- is stuff like Siri and Google Now really just like this? Core set of pre-set commands surrounded by regex magic to recognize said pre-set commands? Interesting.

Begs the question : is it possible, using current knowledge in machine learning and NLP, to create a English-like interface for #{some_device_or_program_here} that learns and self-develops the English commands from the user? Sort of like how Bayesian spam filters (http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html) don't have core preset hardcoded set of Spam-Related Words and classify them accordingly, but instead takes an initial corpus and then learns and self-develops from the user after that.

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#12

Post by kelmop » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:16 AM UTC

AaronBBrown wrote: post #7

kelmop wrote: post #2

I like this idea a lot. But why on earth it is written in ruby?! - I know the answer and it is "ok". But it is probably the reason why it won't never gain huge momentum, prove me wrong :)

What language would you write it in?

c :)

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#13

Post by kelmop » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:18 AM UTC

kelmop wrote: post #2

I like this idea a lot. But why on earth it is written in ruby?! - I know the answer and it is "ok". But it is probably the reason why it won't never gain huge momentum, prove me wrong :)

I knew my reply will be heavily hammered by rubyists. There is nothing wrong in the language but I think that shell tools should be written in C or in some other low level language without complex dependencies over ruby or java or python etc. or any other non-default installation stuff

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#14

Post by the_af » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

I wonder if the author of Betty has taken a look at one of the existing Inform (http://inform7.com) interpreter variants used for Interactive Fiction games (what we used to call "text adventures"). They have progressed a lot since the old text adventures of yore, and are now capable of parsing pretty complex English sentences (instead of just "take sword", you can write "examine sword, then take it and give it to the wizard", and the interpreter will even ask you about ambiguities, such as "which sword? the magic sword or the long sword?").

Then again, I'm unsure if the precision needed from command line interfaces can ever be improved with natural language. Natural language is imprecise, ambiguous, redundant, and confusing even to our human interlocutors. Why would we want to interface with computers in English, instead of using a synthetic and concise made-up language? I'm talking specifically about the command line, which is for power users anyway.

(A perfectly valid answer is "because it was fun to write Betty, and that's its own reward", of course).

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#15

Post by ppod » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:27 AM UTC

andrewguenther wrote: post #3

A cute tool, but seems incredibly limited. Why would I use any of these commands more than once if I can just alias them? While some of them might be useful I really just don't see myself using a tool like this.

http://xkcd.com/1168/

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#16

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:28 AM UTC

kelmop wrote: post #2

I like this idea a lot. But why on earth it is written in ruby?! - I know the answer and it is "ok". But it is probably the reason why it won't never gain huge momentum, prove me wrong :)

"DSLs" are one of ruby's strengths, no?

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#17

Post by jrpt » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:33 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #14

I wonder if the author of Betty has taken a look at one of the existing Inform ( http://inform7.com ) interpreter variants used for Interactive Fiction games (what we used to call "text adventures"). They have progressed a lot since the old text adventures of yore, and are now capable of parsing pretty complex English sentences (instead of just "take sword", you can write "examine sword, then take it and give it to t…

No, I wasn't aware of that, but that is interesting.

Betty just grew out of my cheat sheet of commands. I was tired of repeatedly looking up things in my cheat sheet or Google, and decided to make this.

The current project has a limited number of commands, but I am hoping that by making it public, others will issue pull requests with things they'd want to use.

Its current state is command line only, which is for power users. But thinking ahead, on the roadmap I wrote that by the time it reaches v1.0, I'd like it to be extensible. This means it can be used from text-to-speech apps or whatever. Some futuristic use cases: I'm sitting on my bed, with my computer on my desk, and say "Betty: next song" and it just works. Or I'm running on my treadmill, talking aloud: I'd say "Betty: open the New York Times in Chrome" then "Betty: read me this article" and it just works. That'd be cool. I don't know specifically how to do everything I'd want to do, but those are the sorts of far future things that would be cool. In its current implementation, it's mainly for not having to keep looking up commands or options.

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#18

Post by the_af » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:36 AM UTC

jrpt wrote: post #17

the_af wrote: post #14

I wonder if the author of Betty has taken a look at one of the existing Inform ( http://inform7.com ) interpreter variants used for Interactive Fiction games (what we used to call "text adventures"). They have progressed a lot since the old text adventures of yore, and are now capable of parsing pretty complex English sentences (instead of just "take sword", you can write "examine sword, then take it and give it to t…

No, I wasn't aware of that, but that is interesting. Betty just grew out of my cheat sheet of commands. I was tired of repeatedly looking up things in my cheat sheet or Google, and decided to make this. The current project has a limited number of commands, but I am hoping that by making it public, others will issue pull requests with things they'd want to use. Its current state is command line only, which is for powe…

That would be cool indeed and I hope my comment didn't sound too negative. And you should definitely take a look at Inform (and similar), it's amazing what they can do. I think some interpreters are open source (edit: it seems it's not, I remembered incorrectly).

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#19

Post by rolux » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:52 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #18

jrpt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I wasn't aware of that, but that is interesting. Betty just grew out of my cheat sheet of commands. I was tired of repeatedly looking up things in my cheat sheet or Google, and decided to make this. The current project has a limited number of commands, but I am hoping that by making it public, others will issue pull requests with things they'd want to use. Its current state is command line only, which is for powe…

That would be cool indeed and I hope my comment didn't sound too negative. And you should definitely take a look at Inform (and similar), it's amazing what they can do. I think some interpreters are open source (edit: it seems it's not, I remembered incorrectly).

Ironically, with version 7, Inform itself switched to natural language syntax. The following is valid Inform 7 source code:

`The iron-barred gate is a door. It is north of the Drawbridge and south of the Entrance Hall. It is closed and openable. Before entering the castle, try entering the gate instead. Before going inside in the Drawbridge, try going north instead. Understand "door" as the gate.`

However, what makes a command like "examine sword, then take it and give it to the wizard" complex is not the parsing, but the world model. What if examining the sword reveals an engraving saying "Never hand this to a wizard"? What happens to giving if taking fails? What if the wizard himself is holding the sword? What if he attacks anyone holding a weapon? Etc.

Writing a natural language command line interface seems a lot more straightforward.

Re: Betty – English-like interface for the command line

#20

Post by dsr_ » Mon, May 05, 2014, 12:55 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #18

jrpt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I wasn't aware of that, but that is interesting. Betty just grew out of my cheat sheet of commands. I was tired of repeatedly looking up things in my cheat sheet or Google, and decided to make this. The current project has a limited number of commands, but I am hoping that by making it public, others will issue pull requests with things they'd want to use. Its current state is command line only, which is for powe…

That would be cool indeed and I hope my comment didn't sound too negative. And you should definitely take a look at Inform (and similar), it's amazing what they can do. I think some interpreters are open source (edit: it seems it's not, I remembered incorrectly).

Here you go: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/