Author Topic: Appointment book only displays dashes  (Read 3939 times)

apollon

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« on: May 02, 2009, 11:47:35 am »
When I tell Hal to remember an appointment, he gives me an appropriate reply.
I say: "Appointment today 18:00",
to which he replies: "Appointment on samstag, 2. mai 2009 at 6:00 pm . I'll Remind you when this time is near."
(I'm running a German WinXP, that's why he says "Samstag" and "Mai".)

Then I check the apptmnts.dat and find in there the entry:
appointment on samstag, 2. mai 2009 at 6:00 pm
5.2.2009
18:00:00

But still, he never remembers to remind me.
So I check the appointment book, and what I see is a number of dashes were there should be text. There is a dash on each day where I had entered an event, but nothing else.

Does the address book only work with an English operating system?
 

Bill819

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2009, 12:35:48 pm »
quote:
Originally posted by apollon

When I tell Hal to remember an appointment, he gives me an appropriate reply.
I say: "Appointment today 18:00",
to which he replies: "Appointment on samstag, 2. mai 2009 at 6:00 pm . I'll Remind you when this time is near."
(I'm running a German WinXP, that's why he says "Samstag" and "Mai".)

Then I check the apptmnts.dat and find in there the entry:
appointment on samstag, 2. mai 2009 at 6:00 pm
5.2.2009
18:00:00

But still, he never remembers to remind me.
So I check the appointment book, and what I see is a number of dashes were there should be text. There is a dash on each day where I had entered an event, but nothing else.

Does the address book only work with an English operating system?


YES !
 

apollon

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2009, 01:56:01 pm »
Thanks for the reply, Bill. You seem fairly certain about it. However, I could find nothing in this forum mentioning such a thing. Does there exist a workaround, perhaps?
 

Bill819

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2009, 03:56:15 pm »
quote:
Originally posted by apollon

Thanks for the reply, Bill. You seem fairly certain about it. However, I could find nothing in this forum mentioning such a thing. Does there exist a workaround, perhaps?


Sorry, my post did not go through. My fault, I hit the wrong button.
The creator of Hal is an American college student and Hal was created in the English language for English speaking people. Over the years several different people from different language speaking countries have tried to make Hal work in their own language, ie. Spanish, French, etc. to no avail. I have been using Hal now for about 7 years and to my knowledge that are no foreign language versins in the works.
Bill

« Last Edit: May 02, 2009, 07:56:47 pm by Bill819 »
 

apollon

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2009, 05:33:33 pm »
I see, thank you.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2009, 12:10:00 pm by apollon »
 

Art

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2009, 10:03:50 am »
apollon,

It may be the fact that you are using a German based OS which has it's own parameters for handling dates, times, etc., while the HAL program expects the format to be in a different form, by comparison.

Even though you might be able to change a few external files of Hal, there are internal core files that can't be changed by the user.

Bill819 is correct in that Hal is an English only based chat assistant.

Just as you had problems with Freddy's Hap program that were solved, I'm afraid the one you're having with Hal will not be easy to solve, if at all.

Guten Tag!
In the world of AI it's the thought that counts!

- Art -

apollon

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #6 on: May 03, 2009, 12:24:51 pm »
Right, here's a workaround I came up with:
If you edit the apptmnts.dat and change all the base-24 time signatures to base-12, the appointment book will display everything correctly.

The reason why the appointment book is broken with non-English OSs is that almost all countries, other than the US and the UK, use 24 hour time.
I think that writing a script that replaces all base-24 time inputs with base-12 strings, would be the best solution.
Another, less elegant, alternative would be to change my Windows tray clock to base-12, but I don't know how to do that. Does anybody know?
 

apollon

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Appointment book only displays dashes
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2009, 05:54:40 pm »
Update:
The problem never was the time stamp, but the name of the days and months. The appointment book doesn't take them from the user input, but directly from the Windows clock. The only solution would be to find a way to make Windows use English names for days and months.
Does anyone know where the Windows clock application (i mean the .exe file) is located? By editing it with a hex editor perhaps something could be done.