Meaningful.js

Lightweight Natural Intelligence Framework

Meaningful.js is an experimental library which uses natural intelligence for dealing with meaning. It introduces simple markup for plain text, which allows answering to simple questions like What is diameter of Jupiter? or Can I run OS_like_OS on my computer?, even in simplified natural language form, and solving uncomplicated math problems like Mary has 5 apples, and Tom gave her 7 apples, then Mary ate 3 apples. How many apples does Mary have now?.

Can it change the world?

Why this approach is different?

There is the missing link between ambiguous natural language and too strict formal approaches.
Markup may be applied to plain text. Therefore, potentially, its usage scope is wider than HTML or even Semantic Web one as you can apply it to any data.
Simple enough approach which can be used as soon as you is familiar with syntax and theory, which are intuitive and quite straighforward.
It uses natural language but is not based on it as natural language model of meaning, which has certain deficiencies.
It may change our understanding of user interface, communication, software engineering, and involvement of humans in semantics.

And another 20 reasons why (almost the same at dzone: pt1, pt2 ).

What this approach is not?

It does not relate to "semantic" tags or "semantic" elements of HTML.
It has no complexities of Semantic Web and no restrictions of microformats.

Explanations for natural language and other approaches.

What problems it tries to solve?

To start operating with meaning now and not waiting for too complex and/or not reliable and/or not affordable technologies. Simply put, to have manual solution for tasks which presumably will be automatically resolved in some future. But do we need to wait N more years for that?
To use and understand meaning adequately.
To have bridge between fully unstructured text and fully structured data.
To allow to define meaning gradually, to simplify/complicate relations, to change level of abstraction or detailing, to omit information or add extra information if it is necessary.

When this approach can work for you?

Imagine you have data on some topic, which can be restricted with one web page (for example, data on planets of Solar system).
- Meaningful.js allows to create simple knowledge base on the base of one table and answer to simple questions.
A page about some application (for example, imaginary operating system)
- Basing on this page and data about your computer you can figure out can you install OS on your computer.
Application documentation.

More examples are in form of unit tests.

Where is "natural intelligence"?

It is markup which may make plain text more meaningful.

How to use it?

Please check use-cases...
...API...
...and restrictions

Installation

The library can be used with node.js:

Install node.js
Run npm install in the current directory.
To run unit tests you need to install Jasmine module: npm install -g jasmine.

Please note, you can review package.json and do not install jsdom library (UI unit tests uses it for testing html files but it makes the whole test suite run longer).

Also it can be added to html page with:

	<script type="text/javascript" src="meaningful.js"></script>
	
	<script>
	$(document).ready(function() {
		meaningful.uiInit();
	});
	</script>

Supported environments

Meaningful.js is available for Node.js as well as some browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer).

Maintainers

Yuriy Guskov < meaningful ddoott js aatt g m a i l >

jasonhargrove/meaningfuljs