Operating system command languages assist the user in executing
commands for a significant
number of common everyday tasks. On the other hand, the introduction of
textual command
languages for robots has provided the opportunity to perform some
important functions that
leadthrough programming cannot readily accomplish. However, such command
languages
assume the user to be expert enough to carry out a specific task in these
application domains.
On the contrary, a natural language interface to such command languages,
apart from being
able to be integrated into a future speech interface, can facilitate
and broaden the use of these
command languages to a larger audience. In this paper, advanced techniques
are presented for
an adaptive natural language interface that can (a) be portable to a
large range of command
languages, (b) handle even complex commands thanks to an embedded
linguistic parser, and
(c) be expandable and customizable by providing the casual user with
the opportunity to
specify some types of new words as well as the system developer with
the ability to introduce
new tasks in these application domains. Finally, to demonstrate the
above techniques in
practice, an example of their application to a Greek natural language
interface to the MS-DOS operating system is given.