NICOLE is a theory or experiment that if a computer is given enough combinations of how words, phrases and sentences are related to one another, it could talk back to you.

The development of NICOLE is currently hosted at Sourceforge. This is a great site which makes it very easy to develop applications with many people. Alot of the information on this site is snipped from there, so to get the latest info it is probably better to go to their site.

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News:

Upcoming release -> 0.1.0
Greetings NICOLE followers,

In the next day or so, I will be releasing NICOLE-0.1.0

What's different about this release compared to the others? I'm glad you asked. :)

The past releases (0.0.0 -> 0.0.5) have been development releases and contain half finished objects and programs. Since I have had a large break in my exams, I have spent the weekend coding, completing the vocabulary object, as well as the responder object.

I've also done some tidying up of code (as well as a little bit of documentation).

The main feature for this release is that: *** NICOLE now has the ability and means to reply to human input!!!! ***

I've spent a good hour or so populating the database with sentences and NICOLE is starting to reply back with my input, and MAKE SENSE!! The theory actually looks like it works!!

This has been 10 years in the making!! and it is nice to finally release a workable version of NICOLE after so many false starts. I'm not getting too excited however. I'd much prefer to hear back from other people if they have the same results as I have.

Within the next few days, I will place NICOLE-0.1.0 on the www site (http://nicole.sourceforge.net).

Feel free to download 0.1.0 when it is available it and try it out for yourself!

2000-06-11: Release 0.0.4
This release has been quite an update since the last one.

New features include a mySQL database instead of the old gdbm database. This allows for much faster and more portable database solution.

NICOLE also now stores words in its database. NICOLE still doesn't respond, but the basic database structure is now in place.

Stay tuned for more details later.

2000-06-10: Delay in release 0.0.4
There is a small delay with release 0.0.4 of NICOLE.

This release I planned to give NICOLE the ability to actually store and expand it's own dictionary. I've come across a few problems (namely memory leaks) and I don't want to release buggy code.

I'll release 0.0.4 as soon as this bug is sorted out.

2000-06-01: Release 0.0.3
Fixed a few bugs with the import command, as well as some improvements to the collection object (like handling non-existant databases).

I've also started working on the history object. This records the conversation between the user and NICOLE.

2000-05-29: Minor release error - fixed
There was a small error on my part with release 0.0.2

I've made a few references to MySQL objects (I was playing around with them before) and some of you are receiving errors when trying to run 'make'. The simply fix is to run 'make depend'. This should sort out any dependancies.

I've fixed this up, as well as modifying the INSTALL documentation ready for the next release.


Mailing Lists:

There are currently 3 mailing lists for NICOLE. Feel free to subscribe to any of them

NICOLE-announce

General announcements and new release information.
NICOLE-devel

Current development information and discussions.
NICOLE-users

General mailing list for the users of NICOLE


Downloads:

The latest STABLE. releases of NICOLE can be found at sourceforge.

The latest daily CVS snapshot. DEVEL release of NICOLE can be found at sourceforge.
Please note that release code is very alpha and shouldn't be used in a production environment.

I've also created a WORDLIST that can be used to populate NICOLE's dictionary. Check out the import utility included in NICOLE.


Support:

If you require any support or assistance then please log a support request on the sourceforge site and someone will be able to help you as soon as they can.

Links:

gNIALL - a GNOME port of the original NIALL program, written by Gary. The original NIALL was written by Matthew Peck for the Amiga using AMOS (ah.. those were the days).

Disclaimer:

INTERNET EXPLORER USERS - PAGE NOT FOUND/DNS/SECURE CHANNEL ERRORS

PAGE NOT FOUND/DNS/SECURE CHANNEL ERRORS

There have been a few people who are having trouble in connecting to the sourceforge site. This is due to using Microsoft IE4. It is a known issue. Here is an extract on their page which details the problem

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If you receive this error, it is probably because you are using IE 4. This is due to IE having a problem understanding both Netscape and Microsoft SGS SSL certificates. It _should_ support both, but doesn't. While we're working toward getting a new cert enabled on the servers, the best action in the mean time is to either: (1) use IE 5 128bit, or (2) use Netscape.

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Phil Howlett
19th June 2000