WOOL is a language definition that can be used to write dialogue between virtual agents and humans. The WOOL platform consists of (1) the dialogue language definition, (2) a powerful editor for creating dialogue scripts, and (3) a set of tools to execute these dialogues within your application of choice.
The history of WOOL
The WOOL language is based on existing open source frameworks such as Yarn and Twine. Whereas Twine is designed for interactive storytelling, and Yarn has its roots in video game development, WOOL was developed in the context of designing conversational agents for health promotion. If you are looking to build a narrative-driven video game, check out Yarn. If you want to build an interactive storytelling app, investigate using Twine. If you want to include a virtual agent in your eHealth application, your number one option is WOOL!
Specifically, the WOOL language was created in the context of the Council of Coaches project, a research and innovation project funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Research Programme (Grant Agreement number 769553). You can read more about the project in our Showcase Page for Council of Coaches.
In May of 2021, Roessingh Research and Development (RRD) and Innovation Sprint (iSPRINT) — two collaborators in the Council of Coaches project — have joined forces in operating, maintaining and expanding the WOOL Platform, under the name of The Wool Foundation.
RRD and iSPRINT will jointly take up the task of maintaining and expanding the WOOL Platform, and have formalized their commitment in doing so in the WOOL Foundation Agreement that you can see below:
The launch of the WOOL Foundation is an important step in ensuring the continued support for the WOOL Platform, with two strong founding members that are using WOOL to help grow their technology, while being committed to contributing to a strong Open Source software platform.
License
The WOOL Platform, including the language definition, editor, parsers in Java and JavaScript, and documention that is part of the Documentation Hub are completely open source, and licensed under the MIT License. If you are using WOOL in your project, we would very much appreciate if you include the WOOL Logo, or provide attribution in some other way, and let us know about your project, but this is not legally required. The complete text of the main WOOL Platform license is repeated here below (please refer to the relative GIT Repositories and the specific component source files to verify the applicable license):
Copyright 2019-2021 WOOL Foundation
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
How to contribute?
You are very welcome to contribute to the development, or documentation of the WOOL Platform. Your journey should start by visiting the WOOL Platform Github page. There you can find the various repositories that are used to house the platform source and documentation. For example, see the wool repository for the main WOOL Java Libraries, or the wool-documentation repository for the source of the WOOL Documentation Hub. Feel free to submit any issues, bug reports, suggestions or pull requests in case you have created your own contributions.
If you are looking for a deeper collaboration or more structured strategic contributions, please get in touch by sending an email to info@woolplatform.eu.
Join the Community!
If you want to join our Slack Workspace (woolplatform.slack.com), send us an email at info@woolplatform.eu so we can send you an invitation!
Contributors
The WOOL platform is being developed and maintained by Roessingh Research and Development and Innovation Sprint. Over time, a number of people have contributed to WOOL in various ways. These are:
Harm op den Akker, Dennis Hofs, Boris van Schooten, Tessa Beinema, Silke ter Stal, Julia Beckmann, Miriam Cabrita
