Agenda Process Control Help
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This page shows the state of the CYC® Agenda, and allows the user to control the Agenda Process by starting and halting it, and by selecting an error handling mode.
For all practical purposes, the CYC® Agenda has two states: Halted or Running. The Agenda Status Bar may list several other states, including Enabled or Idle, but since those states play no significant role in the Agenda Process Control, they are grouped together on this page under "Running", primarily as a matter of convenience. See the Agenda Status Bar Help for details on the different Agenda states.
- Halted: The Agenda can be halted due to an error, because it was halted manually, or because it was never initially started after the CYC® image was started up. If the Agenda is "halted" due to an error, "Agenda halted due to" will show the reason why the Agenda has halted. If it was halted manually, "Current Agenda operation" will show the operation that the Agenda has most recently processed. If the Agenda has not yet processed any operations, this part of the page will be blank. When the Agenda is halted, it will not process any operations.
- Running: When the Agenda is running, it is either processing operations, or waiting for operations to process. "Current Agenda operation" will show the operation that the Agenda is currently processing or has most recently processed.
In the middle of this page is a button that controls whether the CYC® Agenda is running or halted. Depending on whether the Agenda is currently running, it will be labelled either "Start Agenda" or "Halt Agenda".
To start the Agenda up again after it has been halted, click on the [Start Agenda] button. Operations cannot be processed unless the Agenda is running, so it's a good idea to keep the Agenda running whenever possible.
To halt the Agenda, click on the [Halt Agenda] button. Remember to restart it when you want to continue processing operations.
The Agenda Process can also be controlled by setting the error handling mode, which tells the Agenda what to do when it encounters an error while processing operations.
There are three possible modes:
- Enter Debugger: Errors appear in the emacs window where the CYC® image was started; in that window, the CYC® process will be in the debugger, and the user will be given a range of options to choose from (the two most commonly used are "continue" and "abort"). The HTML interface may partly freeze when there is an error; choosing an option in the debugger should return things to normal. This mode is only available in CYC® versions with access to the SubL source code, and is usually the default mode in a new CYC® image for those versions.
- Halt and Display Reason: Errors appear on the Agenda Process Control page, and the Agenda will halt, which will be reflected by the Agenda status being listed as "None" in the Agenda Status Bar. Click on the [Start Agenda] button to abort the error and restart the Agenda. For versions of CYC® without access to the SubL source code, this mode will usually be the default mode in a new CYC® image, unless your System Administrator has installed CYC® with different defaults.
- Ignore and Continue: Errors will be bypassed and the Agenda will continue running; no notice or record of the error will be produced. This mode should be used with caution, since a user will have no way of knowing if their work has caused an error.
Click on one of the buttons to the left of the three modes, then press the [Submit New Mode] button. A message will appear confirming the new communication mode. To reset the buttons to reflect the current error handling mode, press the [Current Mode] button.
Note that the current error handling mode is always listed at the top of this section.
If there are unprocessed operations in the local queue, one final section will appear in the Agenda Process Control. This section will list how many operations are waiting in the local queue, as well as provide the following options:
- "Look at the operations in the local queue" displays the (unprocessed) contents of the local queue, in order, and allows the user to clear the entire queue, if desired.
- "Delete the local queue" goes straight to clearing the queue without displaying the contents. A confirmation page is provided in case the user decides not to delete the entire queue after all.
For more detailed information on the CYC® Agenda, see the CYC® Agenda Documentation.
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