Operation Manual

To engage in a dialogue with Corby, you edit a sentence in the lower pane of the main window and then hit Enter. After a while, both your sentence and the Corby’s response will appear in the upper pane of the main window. Meanwhile, in the status bar, if visible, will appear some information regarding the transaction.

The main window of the Corby application is split into two panes. The upper pane is the Log Window and the lower one the Edit Window. You can change their relative height by shifting up or down the bar that separates them. For this, you grab the bar with the mouse by clicking the left mouse button and while maintaining the button down you shift the bar upwards or downwards.

Corby learns from the normal interaction with its users. The basic learning model uses a pair of paragraphs where one of them constitutes the stimulus and the other is the appropriate response to that stimulus. Everything that appears in the Log Window will be automatically submitted for learning. Every paragraph, both your and Corby’s will be submitted twice, once as a stimulus and once as response. You can also save the contents of the Log Window to a file.

Corby can also learn from files. You can submit text or HTML files for Corby to learn from. You can submit a single file, a group of files or an entire directory tree.

As is the case in a conversation with humans, a conversation with Corby can reach a dead end. In those circumstances one of the interlocutors must introduce a new topic of conversation. Corby can provide bootstrap topics that it collects during its interactions with you or from files submitted for learning.

When Corby gives the wrong response or no response at all, you don’t go in a very roundabout way trying to explain what it should have responded like you do with a human. With Corby you have a very precise way of indicating the response it should have given. You do that in the “User feedback" dialog box.

Corby’s ability to find a response to an arbitrary statement can be used to write a file where each paragraph is the response to the previous one. This facility uses the same mechanism that is used for interactive mode, but with a few twists and turns. You can either use a set of keywords to bootstrap the process or use a template.

The Main Window

This is the main window of the Corby Application. Besides the client area, it contains the usual elements: A title bar, a menu bar, a tool bar and finally a status bar. The tool and status bars can be made visible or hidden, with the commands View/Toolbar and View/Status Bar respectively.

At the right of the Status Bar there are the three standard indicators that duplicate the ones on the keyboard: CAP, NUM and SCRL. Immediately to the left there is a field that contains the number of items pending in the learning queue. The remaining of the Status Bar is used for general-purpose messages like command description messages and messages describing the result of a transaction.

The client area of the main window is split into two panes. You can change their relative height by shifting up or down the bar that separates them. The lower pane is a standard edit window where all the commands in the Edit menu and their respective shortcuts work. The upper pane of the main window is called the Log Window because it records the last few transactions of your dialogue with Corby.

The Menu commands

The File menu has these commands:

New Ctrl+N – Clear the Log Window.

Open... Ctrl+O – This is command is not used in the current version of the software.

Save Ctrl+S – This is command is not used in the current version of the software.

Save As... – Save the contents of the Log Window to a file.

Write – Write a file.

Abort - Abort file reading or writing.

Print... Ctrl+P – This is command is not used in the current version of the software.

Print Preview – This is command is not used in the current version of the software.

Print Setup... - Change the printing options.

Recent File – This is command is not used in the current version of the software.

Exit – This command terminates the Corby application.

The File menu has the sub-menu Read with the commands:

File Ctrl+R - Read a TXT or HTML file.

Folder - Read all the files in a folder.

The Edit menu has the following commands:

Undo Ctrl+Z - Undo the last action.

Cut Ctrl+X -Cut the selection and put it on the Clipboard.

Copy Ctrl+C - Copy the selection and put it on the Clipboard.

Paste Ctrl+V - Insert Clipboard contents.

The View menu has the commands:

Statistics - View program statistics.

Status - View program status.

Toolbar - Show or hide the toolbar.

Status Bar - Show or hide the status bar.

The Action menu has the command:

Feedback F9 - Provide feedback to the system.

The Options menu has the commands:

Standard - View and set standard options.

Advanced - View and set advanced options.

The Help menu has the commands:

Main – This opens the page that you are now reading.

Using Corby – This opens the page that describes the usual operation procedures.

Learning - This opens the page that explains how Corby learns.

Options – This opens the page that describes the options that control application behaviour.

Resources – This opens the page that explains how to best use your computing resources.

Knowledge base - This opens the page that describes back-up, restore and recovery procedures.

About Corby... - Display program information, version number and copyright.

The Feedback dialog box

When Corby gives the wrong response or no response at all, you use this dialog box to tell Corby what the correct response is. This Dialog box is activated by the Action/Feedback menu command or its shortcut F9.

The Statistics dialog box

This dialog box shows the current value of several internal variables that control application behaviour. It is activated by the View/Statistics menu command.

The General Options dialog box

This is the General Options dialog box, which contains the options that are most commonly used. It is activated by the Options/Standard menu command.

The Advanced Options dialog box

This is the Advanced Options dialog box, which contains the options that are seldom changed and that require some knowledge of the inner workings of the application to use them effectively. It is activated by the Options/ Advanced menu command.

The Status dialog box

When Corby is reading or writing files, you can activate this window to see the name and path of the files being processed. This dialog box is activates by the View/Status menu command.

The About dialog box

This dialog box includes just the copyright notice and contact information. It is activated by the Help/About Corby... menu command.

Feedback

Comments and suggestions about this page are welcome and should be sent to fadevelop@clix.pt

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