Intelligent Assistant

About the Assistant

You define the

PostParse

method in your task template. Your

PostParse

method must perform any actions required to complete the primary task. The

PostParse

method usually acts as a dispatching method that executes the

subtasks comprising the primary action. In doing so, the

PostParse

method may

validate data and retrieve information that the Assistant was unable to find on its own.

Once your

PostParse

method is invoked, it is in complete

control of the error-handling and user interface on the Newton.
Your

PostParse

method must include any code necessary to

complete the primary action, such as code required to display a
task slip, validate input, and handle errors.

Matching Words With Templates

18

This section discusses the process of extracting words or phrases from user input
and matching them to templates registered with the Assistant. In particular, this
section provides more detail regarding unmatched words, partially matched
phrases, and words that match multiple templates.

When the user taps the Assist button, the system passes the current input string to
the

ParseUtter

function, which matches words in the input string with elements

in the lexicons of templates currently registered with the Assistant. Normally, you
do not need to call the

ParseUtter

function yourself; however, you can

experiment with the Assistant by passing strings to this function in the NTK
Inspector window.

When parsing the input string, the

ParseUtter

function matches entire words only.

For example if the word

"telephone"

appears in a template's

lexicon

slot,

that template is not matched when the word

"phone"

appears in the input string.

The Assistant's matching process is case insensitive; thus, if the word

"phone"

appears in a registered template's

lexicon

slot, that template is matched when

"Phone"

or

"phone"

appears in the input string.

If absolutely nothing in the input string is matched, the return result of the

ParseUtter

function is unspecified. However, if any word in the input string is

matched, the

ParseUtter

function returns a frame containing frames created

from the appropriate templates and additional information about the matched
words. For more information about the result frame returned by the

ParseUtter

function, see the description of this function in Newton Programmer's Reference.

When none of the words in the input string matches an action template, the
Assistant may use the information it did match to try to determine a likely action.
For example, when the user enters the phrase

"buzz 555-1234"

, the Assistant

does not match the word

"buzz"

to an action template but it can identify