Re: [infobot] Infobot rebirth?

[Jonathan H. <vha...@ru...>]

> There are a ton of infobots still running. I'd like to wake the
> project up and get as many folks as are interested working on the same
> tree.

I started off with an infobot, but, as I'm sure everybody has found, it
needs fiddling and hacking to get working the way you want it.  After a
while, I had hacked it around so much, it was barely an infobot any
more.  However, I began to realise that the infobot architecture is just
not well designed enough for the sort of bot that we need.  Reviving
infobot is like reviving gwbasic or something - it was way cool back in
the day, but things have moved on, and there's no point in trying to go
back and fix things up.

That said, infobots are all over the place, and they are very cool bots,
and we can't just stop supporting them.  I don't want to be one of those
people that says "Rework!  Fix!  Revamp!  Start again!" and never does
anything.

When I decided that infobot just wasn't able to support what I wanted, I
started writing my own bot from scratch.  It was originally intended to
be an infobot-clone, with all the same commands, the same interface,
etc.  And, in fact, it was, by about version 0.1.  But I've carried on
hacking and fiddling, and it's kind of moved on.  I scrapped the old
infobot-style Berkeley DB interface (although the modules still work if
anybody still wants to use them) and moved onto a MySQL database.  Most
of the other infobot functions still work with maybe a slight
behavioural change here and there as users requested/complained about
them.

I know that I'm blowing my own bot's trumpet on the infobot mailing
list, but I had many long hours struggling with infobot, and the thing
that bit me the most was the way you had to restart the entire bot just
to add some punctuation in a reply.  That's the main attraction of my
new bot:  it is modular, and hotpluggable.

My bot is called Knab (recursively, "Knab is Not A Bot").

The architecture looks vaguely like so:

Knab::Source  <->  Knab::Processor <-> Knab::Modules

Knab::Source is a generic API for a "Source", which could be IRC
(implemented fully), the Console (implemented fully), a GSM modem, a
webpage, Jabber, whatever.

There is a certain article of faith of mine:

<Vhata> Spinach: rule #1 for bots
<Spinach> rule #1 for bots is Speak Only When Spoken To

Knab's architecture enforces this.  The Source "runs", waiting for
input.  When it receives input, it passes it to the processor, which
processes it, and returns a reply, or replies.  These are then returned
as output.  Thus, the bot can only speak when spoken to.

"Processing" is a matter of passing the input to each one of the loaded
"Modules" in order of priority.  The priority for each module is set as
a configuration variable, and the input gets passed to each one in turn.
These modules have a "Match" function, which gets passed the input.  If
the Match function returns False, then the Module is deemed not to care
about this input, and processing moves onto the next module.  If the
Match function returns true, then the input is passed to the Process()
function of the module, which can do whatever it wants with the input.
If the Process() function sets the 'processed' flag for this input, then
no more processing will be done, and the replies (if any) will be
output, and the bot will move on.

In this way, you can have an Ignore module right at the top of the
processing queue - it will always Match input, and it will check the
sender of the input - if this sender is in the ignore list, it will set
'processed' to true, and return - no more processing will be done, and
the sender will be effectively ignored.

The lovely thing about Knab, however, is that these modules are
hotpluggable.  You can load/unload Modules while the bot is running.
You can load a module, test it, fix an error in the code, and reload it,
and the changes will take place immediately.  This way, you don't need
to keep restarting the bot while you're developing it.

If you want to play with a Knab, you can download it from
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/knab/
Or you can join irc.zanet.net, channel # (i.e. # by itself.  Nothing
else.  Not #hash or #foo, just #), and talk to Spinach, my Knab.

If you want to play with your own Knab, I'm afraid I'm a bit lax on the
documentation.  You will need the following perl modules installed:

BerkeleyDB  Compress::Zlib  DBI  DB_File  Digest::MD5  Digest::SHA1  Fcntl
FileHandle  Geo::IP  HTML::Entities  HTML::TableContentParser
HTTP::Request::Common  IPC::Open2  LWP::UserAgent  Math::BaseCalc
Math::Trig  Net::Dict  POSIX  Socket  Symbol  WWW::Search  FileHandle
Net::IRC

A lot of which are installed with perl's base.

Here is an example of a Knab running.

<Vhata> Spinach: hi
<Spinach> sup, Vhata!
<Vhata> Spinach: lsmod
<Spinach> Vhata: Module list: Strip Auth Ignore Hate Rehash Irc Modules
          Perl MySQLSee ITime Fortune BaseConv Crypt NickOMeter RoShamBo
          GoogleCmp Slashdot REBOL MD5 Roxbury RFC Announce Morse Dict
          Jwhois Google NMBLookup Dvorak DiscDate Babel StonerName
          EtherCode Exchange TraceRoute Insult Units Greet Ping Divine
          RUWeather Swear HowFar MySQLSeen Rot13 Urban NSLookup Lotto
          Karma BashOrg Say MySQLFactoid MySQLFactoidupdate
          MySQLFactoidforget MySQLFactoidsearch Karma

<Vhata> Spinach: modinfo Exchange
<Spinach> Vhata: Exchange: Calculate exchange rate.  Usage:
          "currencies for <place>", or "exchange <value> <currency> into
          <currency>".  TLDs and country names can also be used.
<Vhata> Spinach: exchange 10 USD for .uk
<Spinach> Vhata: 10.00 (United States Dollar (USD)) makes 5.48910
          (Pound (GBP))

<Vhata> Spinach: RFC for avian
<Spinach> RFC 1149 Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams
          on avian carriers. D. Waitzman. Apr-01-1990. (Format: TXT=3329
          bytes) (Updated by RFC2549) (Status: EXPERIMENTAL)
<Spinach> RFC 2549 IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service.
          D. Waitzman. Apr-01-1999. (Format: TXT=9519 bytes) (Updates
          RFC1149) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)

<Vhata> Spinach: itime
<Spinach> Vhata: At the sound of the bot, the Internet Time will
          be 524.99

<Vhata> Spinach: define marmalade
<Spinach> Vhata: marmalade n : a preserve made of the pulp and
          rind of citrus fruits

<Vhata> Spinach: google for killing children to benefit canadian
        pig farmers
<Spinach> Vhata: Google found 'Canadian Coalition for Green Health
          Care', at http://www.greenhealthcare.ca/workshop22-09-00.htm

<Vhata> Spinach: modinfo Fortune
<Spinach> Vhata: Fortune: Return a fortune cookie. Usage:
          "fortune".

<Vhata> Spinach: nslookup knab.sourceforge.net
<Spinach> Vhata: knab.sourceforge.net is 66.35.250.209
<Vhata> Spinach: unload NSLookup
<Spinach> Vhata: Module NSLookup unloaded
<Vhata> Spinach: nslookup knab.sourceforge.net
<Spinach> Vhata: excuse me?
<Vhata> Spinach: load NSLookup
<Spinach> Vhata: Module NSLookup loaded

<Vhata> Spinach: foo is bar
<Spinach> Vhata: I already know stuff about what foo is
<Vhata> Spinach: literal foo
<Spinach> foo =is= baz
<Vhata> Spinach: forget foo
<Spinach> Vhata: foo is no longer an issue
<Vhata> Spinach: foo is bar
<Spinach> Vhata: gotcha
<Vhata> Spinach: foo is also bing
<Spinach> Vhata: gotcha
<Vhata> Spinach: foo has nothing on bar
<Spinach> Vhata: okay
<Vhata> Spinach: literal foo
<Spinach> foo =has= nothing on bar; and =is= bar|bing
<Vhata> Spinach: foo are also a flock of baz
<Spinach> Vhata: sure thing
<Vhata> Spinach: literal foo
<Spinach> foo =are= a flock of baz; and =has= nothing on bar; and
          =is= bar|bing
<Vhata> Spinach: foo =~ s/flock/herd/
<Spinach> Vhata: gotcha
<Vhata> Spinach: literal foo
<Spinach> foo =are= a herd of baz; and =has= nothing on bar; and
          =is= bar|bing


You'll notice that there are multiple verbs in factoids ('is', 'has',
'are', etc).  Knab has everything that an infobot has (and, indeed, is
almost indistinguishable from an infobot), but I really feel that the
monolithic design of infobot is not the way forward for a bot.

I'd love your comments/flames/patches/input?

-Jonathan


----- End forwarded message -----
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Vhata Vas Hyah...
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