Bridging the gap between mixed-initiative dialogs and reusable sub-dialogs

For easing the development process for dialog systems it is desired that reusable dialog components provide pre-packaged functionality 'out-of-the-box' that enables developers to quickly build applications by providing standard default settings and behavior. Additionally, human-computer interaction should become more human-like in that mixed-initiative dialogs are supported. Mixed-initiative interaction requires the system to react to user initiated application specific commands whereby reusable dialog components have to be application independent to be used in different settings. This article presents a dialog mechanism, so called meta-dialog, which is responsible for the control flow between reusable sub-dialogs and mixed-initiative dialogs.