The AI Engine

My new bot Matt has responses depending on the speaker's gender. To be able to do that, as he introduces himself, he asks the person his/her name.

This is under xintroduce:

    Hello. I am Mathieu Lavande. What is your name?
        + (girls-name-catch) [1] <?PF rem "female" as only "gender"; rem "Miss (key1)" as "name"; ?>
        Such a beautiful name. *kisses your hand*
        + (boys-name-catch) [-1] <?PF rem "male" as only "gender"; rem (key1) as "name"; ?>
        Nice to meet you, (mem-name). *shakes your hand*
        + xnomatch [0]
        I am sorry, but I do not recognise that name. Pardon me for asking, but is that a male or a female name?
.... (etc.)

(girls-name-catch) and (boys-name-catch) are plugins that contain a bunch of names.
However, it didn't work here, even though Jessica is in (girls-name-catch):

Mathieu Lavande: (to Guest42) Hello. I am Mathieu Lavande. What is your name?
Guest42: jessica
Mathieu Lavande: Pardon?
Guest42: jessica
Mathieu Lavande: Boring!
Guest42: jessica
Mathieu Lavande: Didn't you get my response? It was 'boring'

Is there any way to make this work?

Another question...

I've seen Pete Puma say something like, "If I have to use another xnone, I'm gonna scream." I've also seen another bot do it. Just curious, how was that done?

the bot builder put it as an xnone?

yeah.... just wondering if it's any ol' xnone or a special one. hah. because it was rather cool.

...just one of them, was picked randomly

It could also be an xnonsense. Those don't come up until there have been several xnones in a row.

melike: it might be simpler to use [?PF if male; ?] and [?PF if female; ?] to make that work. Something like:
Hello!
Seek: xnomatch
---How's it hangin' girl? [?PF if female; ?] [?PF rem "female" as only "gender; ?]
---Hey there, bro! [?PF if male; ?] [?PF rem "male" as only "gender"; ?]

Of course, seeks on hellos and initiates have been problematic lately...

Ulrike: I do the if male/if female thing for bots, but I'm using (mem-gender), because I'll be linking to Matt from my website and most people he talks to will be Guests.

but is it correct that if seeks on hellos and initiates did work, my way of determining the Guest's gender would work?

Excepting for the odd name exception (Alex, Chris, etc. could be for guys or girls), I think it should.

Was going to follow up to that and got confused.
Instead of something like this,
<?PF if (favoritefood) is not "ice cream"; ?>
could you do something like
<?PF if (favoritefood) is not "(ice_cream)"; ?> (using a plug in)
I don't think it says in the book of AI...

I was just wondering the same thing, and stuck in an experimental tag like that...If it works right, I'll letcha know.