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180 lines
9.8 KiB
HTML
180 lines
9.8 KiB
HTML
{% extends "layout.html" %}
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{% block title %}RiveScript{% endblock %}
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{% block content %}
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<h1>RiveScript</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#intro">Project Description</a></li>
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<li><a href="#site">Project Website</a></li>
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<li><a href="#history">History</a></li>
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</ul>
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<a name="intro"></a>
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<img src="projects/RiveScript/logo.png" alt="RiveScript" width="400" height="90">
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<h2>Project Description</h2>
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<strong>RiveScript</strong> is a text-based scripting language for giving responses to chatterbots.
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The project was started in late 2004 and tentatively named <em>AiChaos Alpha</em>. It has a simple,
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easy to learn format and it could be argued that it's more powerful than AIML (Artificial Intelligence
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Markup Language).<p>
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In short, it's a scripting language used to match a response to a message provided by the human.<p>
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In its simplest form, RiveScript code might look like this:
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<pre>+ hello bot
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- Hello, human!</pre>
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And can get into some more complicated things like this:
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<pre>+ my name is *
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* <get name> == undefined => <set name=<formal>>Nice to meet you, <get name>>!
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* <get name> == <formal> => I know, you've told me your name before.
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* <get name> == <bot name> => <set name=<formal>>Wow, we have the same name!
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* <get name> != <formal> => <set name=<formal>>Did you get a name change?</pre>
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<a name="site"></a>
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<h2>Project Website</h2>
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This project's official website is <a href="http://www.rivescript.com/">RiveScript.com</a>.
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Go there to learn more, download bots and RiveScript interpreters, and join the forum.<p>
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For my Perl RiveScript library, the latest version can always be downloaded from CPAN:<br>
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<a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?RiveScript">http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?RiveScript</a>
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<a name="history"></a>
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<h2>History</h2>
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<h3>A Brief Introduction to Bots</h3>
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In short, chatterbots are programs that communicate with humans using natural language. Often,
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chatterbots will communicate with humans over a common interface, such as an instant messenger.
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I got into bot programming around the years of 2000 and 2001, starting out with RunABot.com, where
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many other would-be botmasters start. RunABot used AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language)
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as their method of programming replies for the bots.<p>
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Due to RunABot's restrictions and the fact that free bot accounts would suffer anytime there was
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a server problem, I found my way to the website of the <a href="http://www.alicebot.org/">ALICE A.I.
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Foundation</a>, the home of AIML and the chatterbot that made it famous: Alice. I downloaded AliceBot
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Program D, a Java-based AIML robot that worked on AIM and IRC. Immediately it was much more responsive
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and fast than RunABot, but at a price: it had no built-in rate limit circumvention. The bot I ran from
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Program D wasn't popular enough that it would violate its rate limits by sending its messages instantly
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to its users, but it was a concern of mine. Also, it had no way of defending itself against the
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infamous Warning system that AIM has.
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<h3>Programming My Own</h3>
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Due to AliceBot Program D's disregard to the worrisome aspects of the AIM protocol, and because I
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wanted to have a bot for MSN Messenger, I googled for MSN bots and found my way to WiredBots.com,
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where they had simple Perl bot templates for AIM and MSN bots. These templates were very simplistic
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and they were only programmed to send a random quote from a text file in response to all human
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messages. I also had never really dealt with Perl very much before this. I had mainly only worked
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with the more simplistic languages of JavaScript and HTML.<p>
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I learned a lot about Perl just by tinkering with these bot templates. After I got a good handle
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on the language, I started releasing my own bot templates based on the WiredBots code, before
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rewriting some of my own templates from scratch. The one thing I missed about my past bot adventures
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that I couldn't get from Perl: the AIML language of Alice bots.
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<h3>Alternatives to AIML</h3>
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Somebody made a Perl-based Alice bot once. It was called Program V, and as of now it's impossible
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to find anymore. Nobody I know could ever figure out how to make this program work, though. And its
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AIML modules were difficult to port. Alice bot programs tend to be complete all-in-one bots. I only
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wanted the module that parses AIML, but I couldn't separate that module from the other ones that
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managed the configuration and other intricate details that don't apply to what I wanted it for.<p>
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Ultimately giving up with Program V's code, and failing numerous times with XML parsers trying to
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create my own, I had little other choice than to create something new. Something easier for Perl
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to parse. I made a couple of my own XML-based languages, which failed. A couple other attempts later,
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and I ended up with a rather simple concept: creating a text-based language driven by command characters
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and lines of text. The basic idea was that the language should look like this:
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<pre>+ hello bot
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- Hello human!</pre>
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A plus for the trigger to match against the human's message, and a minus for the bot's response.
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Following that format I added a few more commands to enable it to handle conditionals, redirections,
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topics, and a lot of the other cool things that AIML can do.
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<h3>Chatbot::Alpha</h3>
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The first incarnation of my chatterbot scripting language was called <em>AiChaos Alpha</em>,
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where AiChaos was the name of my website devoted to bots and Alpha was the name of the scripting
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language itself. I chose the Chatbot:: namespace because it's difficult to get a root level namespace
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on <a href="http://www.cpan.org/">CPAN</a>, and because Chatbot::Eliza was looking pretty lonely there,
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being the only module under the Chatbot space.<p>
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After working on Chatbot::Alpha for a while, it grew to be more powerful than the simple idea that
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started it, however it wasn't being programmed very efficiently. It wasn't as powerful as AIML yet,
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and the logic of the program didn't allow for complicated things that would rival the <that> tag
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from AIML.
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<pre><!-- This is an example of the <that> tag in AIML -->
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<category>
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<pattern>ASK ME A QUESTION</pattern>
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<template>
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<random>
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<li>Do you have a dog?</li>
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<li>What's your favorite color?</li>
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</random>
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</template>
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</category>
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<category>
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<pattern>YES</pattern>
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<that>DO YOU HAVE A DOG</that>
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<template>
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What is its name?
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</template>
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</category></pre>
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<h3>Chatbot::RiveScript</h3>
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Since I programmed myself into a corner with Alpha, I changed its name to RiveScript and
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started over from scratch. The syntax was still very similar, but RiveScript was rebuilt
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from the ground up, this time with Alpha's limitations in mind. It wasn't very long before
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RiveScript not only matched the features of AIML, but surpassed AIML in multiple areas.
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After it became quite a large program, I submitted a request to CPAN to have a root-level
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name space. The CPAN admins accepted my request and gave me the root-level name space
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of RiveScript. And thus, the module went from being "Chatbot::RiveScript" to simply "RiveScript".
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<h3>RiveScript 1.00</h3>
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The module started at version 0.01 as Chatbot::RiveScript, and I wanted to make sure it
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was perfect before calling it 1.00. After about a year of development, it was about as
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perfect as it was going to get. I released the 1.00 version. Years went by before new bugs
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were reported, and it eventually went to 1.02 and stayed there. The chatterbot scene was
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drying up by now. The once lively forum of <a href="http://www.bot-depot.com/">Bot-Depot</a>
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was losing all its best members. Nobody was actively developing bots anymore, and all that
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was left were the occasional newbies asking questions that nobody might answer.<p>
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Thus, I lost interest in furthering the development of RiveScript. That was in 2005. Now,
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three years later, somebody in a different forum posted a thread about wanting to learn
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Perl. I asked why (for CGI or for offline programming) so I could link him to the appropriate
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tutorial, and he said he wanted to learn it because he heard he could program bots with it.
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That inspired me to dust off the old RiveScript module and fix it up.<p>
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<h3>RiveScript 2.00</h3>
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So, I registered the domain name <a href="http://www.rivescript.com/">RiveScript.com</a>,
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which is now the "RiveScript Headquarters". I decided I would also come up with a new standard
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for RiveScript. Learning from the limitations of the old version and how it relied on Perl
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so much, the new standard was written with multiple implementations in mind. I published
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a "RiveScript 2.00 Working Draft", a document describing the standards of the RiveScript
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language from an implementation-agnostic point of view. It describes how RiveScript itself
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should work -- it's up to the programmer to implement it. The new standards raised the bar
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over what the old language was capable of, and I began development of a new RiveScript
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module to meet these new standards.<p>
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Development of a RiveScript 2.00-compliant module is still in development, but it's getting
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close to completion. I'm trying to learn C++ with the goal of eventually making a RiveScript
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interpreter in that, which could be compiled into a DLL or Shared Object that other programs
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could utilize, or provide the source code to allow it to be directly compiled in with other
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programs.
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{% endblock %} |