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Uniform help facilities for a cooperative user interface

Published: 07 June 1982 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the design of the help and explanation component of a user-friendly operating system command interface called COUSIN. The facility can provide two kinds of information: (1) static descriptions of the various subsystems that can be invoked, their parameters, and the syntax that must be used; (2) dynamically generated descriptions of the state of the current interaction, why that state has arisen, and what the user's options for action are. Both types of information are presented in the same way through a network of small text frames connected by semantically motivated links in the style of the ZOG system. Frames containing static information are generated automatically for each subsystem from a declarative description of the subsystem which is also used by COUSIN for its other services, including spelling and grammar correction and interactive error resolution. Dynamically generated frames are incorporated temporarily into the static network with semantic links appropriate to the current command context.

References

[1]
Ball, J. E., and P. J. Hayes. "Representation of Task-Independent Knowledge in a Gracefully Interacting User Interface." Proceedings of the 1st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University, August 1980, pp. 116--120. Obtainable from American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 445 Burgess Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025.
[2]
Carbonell, J. G., and P. J. Hayes. "Dynamic Strategy Selection in Flexible Parsing." Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Stanford University, June 1981, pp. 143--147.
[3]
Hayes, P. J. "A Construction Specific Approach to Focused Interaction in Flexible Parsing." Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Stanford University, June 1981, pp. 149--152.
[4]
Hayes, P. J. "Anaphora in Limited Domain Systems." Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vancouver, 1981, pp. 416--422. Obtainable from American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 445 Burgess Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025.
[5]
Hayes, P. J., and G. V. Mouradian. "Flexible Parsing." Proceedings of the 18th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Philadelphia, June 1980, pp. 97--103.
[6]
Carnegie-Mellon University, Computer Science Department. Son of Stop-Gap (SOS). Originally developed at Stanford Al Lab; the help facility was added at CMU. 1978.
[7]
Carnegie-Mellon University, Computer Science Department. RdMail Message Management System. 1980.
[8]
Carnegie-Mellon University, Computer Science Department. TOPS LISP. 1978.
[9]
Hayes, P. J., J. E. Ball, and R. Reddy. "Breaking the Man-Machine Communication Barrier." Computer, 14 (1981), pp. 19--30.
[10]
Robertson, G., A. Newell, and K. Ramakrishna. "ZOG: A Man-Machine Communication Philosophy." Technical Report, Computer Science Department, Carnegie-Mellon University, August 1977.
[11]
Glasner, I. D., and P. J. Hayes. "Automatic Construction of Explanation Networks for a Cooperative User Interface." Technical Report, Computer Science Department, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1981.
[12]
Fenchel, R. S. "Integral Help for Interactive Systems." Technical report UCLA-ENG-8051, Computer Science Dep't., UCLA, 1980.

Cited By

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  • (2000)Plan Realization for Complex Command Interaction in the UNIX Help DomainArtificial Intelligence Review10.1023/A:100657012913014:3(181-228)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2000
  • (2000)Plan Realization for Complex Command Interaction in the UNIX Help DomainIntelligent Help Systems for UNIX10.1007/978-94-010-0874-7_10(181-228)Online publication date: 2000
  • (1988)Representation of command language behavior for an operating system consultation facility[1988] Proceedings. The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications10.1109/CAIA.1988.196080(50-55)Online publication date: 1988
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  1. Uniform help facilities for a cooperative user interface

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    AFIPS '82: Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1982, national computer conference
    June 1982
    857 pages
    ISBN:088283035X
    DOI:10.1145/1500774
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 07 June 1982

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    View all
    • (2000)Plan Realization for Complex Command Interaction in the UNIX Help DomainArtificial Intelligence Review10.1023/A:100657012913014:3(181-228)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2000
    • (2000)Plan Realization for Complex Command Interaction in the UNIX Help DomainIntelligent Help Systems for UNIX10.1007/978-94-010-0874-7_10(181-228)Online publication date: 2000
    • (1988)Representation of command language behavior for an operating system consultation facility[1988] Proceedings. The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications10.1109/CAIA.1988.196080(50-55)Online publication date: 1988
    • (1987)A response generation mechanism for an intelligent active assistance systemProceedings of the 15th annual conference on Computer Science10.1145/322917.322937(128-132)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1987
    • (1987)GIOTTO, an Intelligent User-AssistanceHuman–Computer Interaction–INTERACT '8710.1016/B978-0-444-70304-0.50150-3(953-957)Online publication date: 1987
    • (1986)Help texts vs. help mechanisms: A new mandate for documentation writersProceedings of the 4th annual international conference on Systems documentation10.1145/10563.10576(78-83)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1986
    • (1983)The COUSIN user interface projectACM SIGOA Newsletter10.1145/1017937.10179394:2(3-7)Online publication date: 31-Dec-1983

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