Page Comparison

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<sv id="timeSinceLastUserAction" value="0" type="NUMBER" desc="Time in seconds since the last thing said by the user."/>
<sv id="timeSinceLastSystemAction" value="0" type="NUMBER" desc="Time in seconds since the last thing said by the system."/>
<sv id="consecutiveUnhandledUserActions" value="0" type="NUMBER" desc="Number of consecutive user actions for which the system had no direct response (handler)."/>
<sv id="timeSinceLastAction" value="0" type="NUMBER" desc="Time in seconds since anyone said something (user or system)."/>
<sv id="timeSinceLastResource" value="0" type="NUMBER" desc="Time in seconds since the last resource link/video was given."/>
<sv id="event" value="null" type="TEXT" desc="Name of last speech act said by the user and processed by the system."/>
<sv id="lastNonNullSubdialog" value="null" type="TEXT" desc="Name of last sub-dialog executed by the system."/>
<sv id="systemEvent" value="null" type="TEXT" desc="Name of the speech act last said by the system."/>
<sv id="timerInterval" value="1" type="NUMBER" desc="Time in seconds between 2 consecutive timer events."/>
<sv id="preferForms" value="true" type="BOOLEAN" desc="If true and a form is available for the current system speech act, the form will be selected by the NLG."/>
<sv id="tmpEvent" value="null" type="TEXT" desc="Variable used to store the input event that generated one of the internal events (e.g. unhandled, ignore and loop)."/>

Each line found in that file shows a special variable. id is the name of the variable to be used if you want to refer to that variable in your dialogue policies. value is the initial value given to that variable at start-up. type specifies the type of the variable (just to give you an idea, variables are untyped so you can change if want what that variable stores, but when the dialogue manager will automatically update that variable it'll write again something that belongs to the predefined type found in this description). desc contains a textual description of what that variable contains.

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<policy xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
 <xi:include href="macros.xml"/>
 <xi:include href="initKB.xml"/>
 <xi:include href="goals.xml"/>
 <stepDiscount value="0.9"/>
 <include href="textFormat/policy.txt"/>
</policy>

line 2 specifies the file used to define all the variables in the information state and macros used in effects (events and information state updates).

line 3 specifies the file used to define all the variables in the information state and to initialize them.

line 3 4 specifies the file that defines the basic value of the rewards available in this dialogue policy.

line 4 5 specifies the discount factor alpha mentioned in the expected reward formula. The line given above defines a discount factor of 0.9.

line 5 6 includes a file that specifies some operators (actions/sub-dialogues) in a particular text format. One could specify the sub-dialogue trees directly in a xml variant but it's harder and so we prefer to document how to design operators using this special text format. One can have any number of text format files included. When designing complex characters, it is helpful to organize the sub-dialogues in multiple files.

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• A number like in assign(timeSinceLastAction,0.3)
• A string like in assign(name,'John')
• A Boolean like in assign(notTrue,false)
• No value like in assign(unknown,null)
• an hash table line in assign(tmp,set(answer2questionmap,'answer.question.1','question.1')) this assignment is equivalent to a java statement: tmp=answer2questionmap.put('answer.question.1','question.1')
• a list like in assign(tmp,topic(?)) here tmp will contain all arguments, x, for which topic(x) is true in the information state.
• A java object can be assigned but only programmatically

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