CHAPTER 8
Newton Services
8-24 Intelligent Assistant
The Assistant matches words regardless of their capitalization. For example,
it considers the word “phone” to be the same as the word “Phone.”
The order in which a user writes words is not significant. For example, the
phrase “Royce fax” produces the same result as the phrase “fax Royce.” This
syntax-independent architecture allows easier localization of applications for
international audiences.
The Assistant ignores words it does not know, giving users the freedom to
write naturally. Rather than limiting the user to terse commands, the
Assistant extracts meaningful words from phrases such as “Make a phone
call to Bob at work” and ignores the others. There is a limit to this freedom,
however. The Assistant does not attempt to interpret a phrase containing
more than 15 words.
Assist Slip 8If the Assistant can’t interpret a user’s written request, the Assistant displays
an Assist slip where the user can provide more information. The user can
choose an action from the Assist slip’s Please picker and can write on the
slip’s input line. If a user wrote some words before tapping the Assist button
but did not write enough to clearly specify an action, the Assist slip displays
those words and includes a message prompting the user to provide additional
information. For example, if a user just wrote “Bob,” the Assistant could
perform a number of actions: it could find Bob, fax Bob, call Bob, schedule a
meeting with Bob, and so on. Figure 8-23 shows examples of Assist slips with
too few words and with no words.