INSTALLING, COMPILING AND RUNNING THE TOY DYNAMIC LEXICON APPLICATION

Manny Rayner

Last revised: Sep 18, 2008

1. OVERVIEW The toy dynamic lexicon app demonstrates dynamic grammar capabilities using a version of the Toy1Specialised grammar, enhanced with a few sample dynamic lexicon declarations. It does not perform any dialogue processing, but only recognition and dynamic addition of lexicon content.
2. INSTALLING Perform a 'make' in the directory $REGULUS/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/scripts This should do two things:

• Build a dummy top-level recognition package (very quick)
• Build a dynamic version of the Toy1Specialised grammar Note that it is NOT necessary to build a Nuance recognition package. The Nuance grammar is compiled at runtime by the compilation server.

1. STARTING UP THE APP

• Start a license manager
• Invoke $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/scripts/run_resource_manager.bat
• Invoke $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/scripts/run_compilation_server.bat
• Invoke $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/scripts/run_recserver.bat
• Invoke $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/scripts/run_toy_dynamic_app.bat

1. RUNNING THE APP The app starts up and goes into a loop. At each iteration, the user can type one of the following:

• [Return] Perform recognition and print result.
• NEW NAME <Name> e.g. NEW NAME beverley NEW NAME howard the duck

  Add the new name to the vocabulary, using the lexicon macro system_name_phrase. The effect should be as if the lexicon entry

  @person_name(<NameAsCommaList>, <NameAsSemConstant>)

  had been included in the original grammar. For example, if you type "NEW NAME howard the duck", the effect is as if the lexicon entry

  @person_name((howard, the, duck), howard_the_duck)

  had been included in the grammar.

• EXIT Exit loop and quit.

1. COVERAGE Coverage of the recogniser is defined by the training corpus in $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/corpora/toy1_corpus.pl, together with any dynamic names that may be added. Note that imperative sentences in the corpus are prefaced by a name. Originally, the only name in the lexicon is "magnificent one".
2. BUILDING YOUR OWN DYNAMIC APPLICATIONS If you want to build your own dynamic application, start by looking in the files $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/Regulus/toy1_lex.pl and $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/Prolog/toy1_app.pl:

   6.1 Regulus/toy1_lex.pl

   This file contains the lexicon. Look at the use of lexicon macros and "dynamic_lexicon" declarations. In order to allow dynamic assertion of a lexicon entry at runtime, a suitable macro must be defined and declared dynamic.

   Note that Regulus compilation, invoked by doing 'make' in the scripts directory, creates the file Generated/toy1_dynamic_lex_associations.pl. This file contains declarations that need to be accessed by the application at runtime.

   6.2 Prolog/toy1_app.pl

   The code in $REGULUS/Examples/Toy1SpecialisedDynamic/Prolog/toy1_app.pl is intentionally very simple. It should be easy to adapt to other applications which require dynamic lexicon capabilities. Some specific things to note:

• In the predicate initialise/4, note the call init_dynamic_lexicon_runtime(DynamicLexAssociationsFile)

  This needs to be made before any dynamic lexicon calls are made.

• The actual process of adding a dynamic lexicon entry is performed by the call

  assert_dynamic_lex_entry(MacroCall)

  in add_name/1. MacroCall should be a lexicon entry, defined using a lexicon macro which has been declared dynamic. For example, typing

  NEW NAME howard the duck

  at the top level of the application results in the call

  assert_dynamic_lex_entry( @person_name((howard, the, duck), howard_the_duck))