Purpose

After installing this plugin, when you ask some information, such as "tell me the local news" or "I need to access my yahoo mail", your Hal will be able to open the browser and access these and many other predefined web addresses.

Requirements

This plugin requires Hal 6.0.

How to install it

Download the file vrWeb.zip and copy it on your hard drive. Then unzip it using as target directory your Hal 6 directory, so that the files are in the Hal 6 main directory. You should get the following files:

vrWeb.uhp (the plugin script)

vrWebHelp.html (the User Guide you are reading now)

Then select General Options - Brain and mark the "Customized Web Searches" checkbox.

The plugin does not change the standard Hal brain script, nor are you required to do it. It just creates the new table vrWeb in the Hal database brain, so it should not affect in any way all the other information you have stored there. However, we recommend to create a backup copy of your brain, before installing it.

How to use it

Here is an example of what Hal does, according to your input.

If your sentence contains	Then Hal will do the following	Notes
hal help	displays the welcome page	-
google something	opens a Google search on something	-
viki something	opens a vikipedia search on something	-
yahoo mail	opens the yahoo mail page	-
virtual humans forum	opens the Virtual Humans forum page	-
zabaware forum	opens the zabaware forum page	-
local weather	opens the local weather page	must be customized according to your preferences; the default is setted on Rome, just as an example
local news	opens the local news page	must be customized according to your preferences; the default is setted on New York, just as an example

How to configure it

This plugin automatically creates the table vrWeb in the miscData folder of the Hal brain where you run it. This table contains some default words, used by Hal to recognize the need to run the corresponding Web search. You can customize them, changing some values (i.e. replace the local weather web address with your favorite local weather address) and/or adding or deleting some of them. To do this:

1. Launch Hal Brain Editor.
2. Open the brain you want to customize.
3. Open the miscData folder on the left.
4. Double Click on the vrWeb table.
5. Add, Delete or Modify the lines according to your preferences. In doing this, remember that you must always keep the wildcard characters (*) before and after the words in the left column.
6. Close and save your brain.
7. Restart your Hal.

How to uninstall it

In case you do not want to use it anymore, simply select General Options - Brain and unmark the "Customized Web Searches" checkbox. If you want to remove it completely from your system, remove the files vrWeb.uhp and vrWebHelp.html from the directory and delete the vrWeb table.

Disclaimer

Comments