[ACT-R-users] How to do Rich GUI with ACT-R ?

[db30 at andrew.cmu.edu]

--On Wednesday, August 31, 2011 9:43 PM +0800 yliu <yliu at zju.edu.cn> wrote:

>
> Hello ACT-R Community,
>
>
> I'm applying ACT-R to model some driving tasks, meanwhile these works require
> rich GUI. As we know the AGI(ACT-R GUI Interface) provide simple functions
> for GUI, so I want to use the Project module to build rich interface in
> Alegro Common Lisp platform.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. Is there anyone has used ACT-R to build models with Project module in
> Alegro Common Lisp platform?
>
> 2. Is it possible to do so and how to do it ?
>
> 3. Can anyone give an example or some instructions?
>
>



The ACL Project Manager is essentially just a tool for organizing and
working with a set of files.  It is integrated with the ACL Form Builder
(the GUI building interface in the ACL IDE) so that the code which gets
automatically generated by the Form Builder for an interface can be
maintained within a "project", but really there's nothing which the
Project Manager and Form Builder do that can't be done without them.
They are not going to affect how one builds an ACT-R model.  That is
still going to require writing the model code along with functions to
run the model as needed in one or more source files.  Those files could
then be added to an ACL "project" just like any other source file if
one wanted to maintain things that way.  For information on how to use
the Project Manager and the Form Builder you will have to consult the
documentation which comes with ACL, and the "Allegro CL Documentation"
entry under the Help menu will take you to that.

Now, a related question is how can the model interact with an interface
built using the ACL Form Builder?  The answer to that is that it would
do so the same way it interacts with all other interfaces (like those
built using the AGI) through the use of a device for the model.  The
ACT-R code comes with a basic device for interacting with ACL's "Common
Graphics" GUI interface when running on a Windows machine.  So, calling
the install-device command with an instance of a window built through the
Form Builder would be required for the model just like it is in the
models with interfaces built with the AGI.

That included device for an ACL Common Graphics window is capable of
producing "real" keyboard and mouse inputs to the interface from the model's
motor actions (they're generated as OS events thus to the window they're
basically indistinguishable from a user's actions), and it is able to see
static text, buttons, and text entry boxes.  If you want to have the model
perceive additional interface elements then you will have to add
appropriate methods to the device code to do so.  The ACL device code can
be found in the devices/acl/device.lisp file of the ACT-R distribution and
basic information on how to create devices can be found in the slides
named "extending-actr" in the docs directory.

Hope that helps,
Dan

PS
One final note just to make sure there's no confusion.  There is no
relation between modules in the ACT-R software and modules as it is
used in the Project Manager tool in ACL.