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

[yliu]

>From: db30 at andrew.cmu.edu
>Reply-To: 
>To: ACT-R <act-r-users at act-r.psy.cmu.edu>
>Subject: Re: [ACT-R-users] How to do Rich GUI with ACT-R ?
>Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:40:55 -0400
>
>
>
>--On Wednesday, August 31, 2011 9:43 PM +0800 yliu
 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.
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> 

Thank you Dan, it is great help. Let me try it.

kind regards.

Yanfei