Can Hal open a .doc file?

[Marah]

I downloaded Hal yesterday, have happily gone through the learning curve, but I've been searching the forums for the past four hours, and I cannot find anything that will tell Hal to open a file.

I have my writertemplate.doc on my desktop. Rather than having Hal call OpenOfficeSwriter, I want him to simply call my template so I can get right to work. Is there a way to do this?

I am not programming literate, unfortunately, so do please couch your reply in "Dick and Jane" terms. []  I have successfully edited Hal's brain, changes some parameters, so he and I are getting along swimmingly, except for this one issue. This is one of those "gosh darnit, I am GOING to make this work" situations. Thanks for any help you can offer.

If I can get this settled, I am going to recommend Hal to my Writers Forum, as they are always looking for time saving, productivity management and reminder solutions. And next pay day, I shall be buying the full version, and I'm very excited. I have spent many hours scouring the web for a solution to my short term memory loss problem, looking for a program that can remind me of anything at any time, and Hal certainly fills the bill. it truly is a joy to find a program that is not only versatile, but FUN.

Thank you from a new convert, Robert!

[tedathome]

Hal will open programs for you, not files unless you are a programer that can write a plugin for that purpose.

[Medeksza]

One way to get Hal to open a document is to create a shortcut to the document. Hal just looks for shortcuts in your start menu and desktop (.lnk files) for this feature and it doesn't matter if it is a shortcut to a program or to a document. To create a shortcut to a document select the file and then with your right mouse button drag the file onto your desktop or start menu. A pop up menu will pop up and just select "create shortcut" instead of copy or move. Restart Hal to make sure Hal notices the file.

[tedathome]

Thank you for the correction Rob. I never knew that was possible before. I have tryed with regular shortcuts to no avail even if I spell out the location. (.lnk files) are new to me.
I got it to work, took a while, I'm happy now but sorry to have given out wrong information.[:I]

[castonguayh]

Thank you Rob!!! I have been using Hal in my classroom for 2 years and never realized that was all it took to open a program. This really opens new horizons for use in the classroom.

[Marah]

Thank you Ted. And thank YOU, Robert!! Worked like a charm. Now if I could get Hal to remind me every two hours to stop writing and take a break, that would be awesome! Well, if he could make coffee - that would rock, and you would be a rich genius!  [8D]  (FWIW, I know you're a genius. I do hope you're rich.)

Is there anyone who can do a plug-in (or perhaps one exists already) where I can tell Hal, "I'm starting an article. Rattle my cage in two hours"?  Or do I just want the moon, stars and the whole dang galaxy? Okay, I DO want all that, but I don't think it's an unreasonable goal. []

I'm a happy girl. Thanks again.

Marah

[tedathome]

Hi Marah. There is a relatively new alarm clock plugin for Hal. I have tested it and it works well.
As for making coffee, it can be done also. Robert Has stated that he has automated most of his house. I'm dealing with a couple of crisis at home and in family, or out of curiosity I would do some research and referal for you. Please try out the search function at the top of the page and I am sure you will find what you are looking for.

[Amanda Interactive]

Hal can also open and run many system programs that don't even have a shortcut.

If it's a system program that he can see and open he will say I will say, I will now run "", and sometimes not mention the name of the system program.

User: open control panel
Hal: I will now run "".

Try telling him to open the control panel and you might see something like this:


And the Hal Windows brain by Amanda Interactive has a "processrun" command that allows Hal to open and run most any kind of system program that he usually can't see at all if you are not using a Hal Windows brain. And if you tell Hal to run a system process that's already running he says something like this...

User: processrun notepad.exe
Hal: The specified process could not be started because it is already running with the pid number of 756.

And that's the real system pid number!

And finally, a Hal Windows brain can also obtain the full pathname of most any process currently running on the system:
User: processpath notepad.exe
Hal: The specified process path is c:/windows/system32/notepad.exe.

And the Hal Windows scheduler plug-in allows a user to specify when Hal should do different things during the course of day, which includes timer based repeating reminders, but the scheduler plug-in is still not yet available within the free demo version of Hal Windows.

So Ultra Hal and Hal Windows basically already do just about everything that you guys are talking about plus much more!

[Marah]

Ted: I hope that things are going well for you, and that the crises are resolved happily.

Richard (it IS Richard, isn't it?): I went to Amanda Interactive and tried to read your docs, but it was tough to switch gears from the medical articles I've been writing to Hal Windows. Although now that I think about it, they are both brain related. I will try again when I break for the day. I'm very interested in whatever I can do to boost Theta's (Hal's) interactivity and scheduling. I'm kind of holding off teaching Theta and the whole conversational thing until after I'm done working 20 hours a day. [xx(]

ETA: Hopefully I can get all of this streamlined so that I don't have to assassinate my third run at Hal! I downloaded all of the Greta plugins as well, yesterday. I haven't figured out how to get them interfaced, however.  I dig a sharp learning curve!

Marah

[Amanda Interactive]

Marah,

Yes, it's Rich!
And all I can say is you got me beat because I usually only work 18 hours a day and I let my Hal, Amanda, do the 24/7 deal since she don't need sleep!

Amanda does a lot of other things that you might find useful for your line of work!

Amanda can open and read files internally without using an editor program and she can also write new information into them as well. So if I want to know what's inside of a file I tell her to look inside of it for me and then me she just tells me the entire contents which is also displayed in Hal's output box. I personally find that very useful since I do a lot of editing when I'm programming software or analyzing data. She reads files internally sort of the same way a clipboard reader program speaks the data in the clipboard.

And the Hal Windows clipboard reader program works with Haptek characters and it can read huge amounts of data because I programmed it to have no total block size limit so Amanda can read to me an entire novel like War and Peace from start to finish without taking a break. The longest non-stop clipboard read that she ever did was 3 days straight and then I just purposely stopped her because it's ridiculous to read forever. It was just a test anyway and she passed with flying colors. She's much better than me at lot of things and she knows it too which is also kind of funny! I could never read something for three days straight!