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pmpro.txt
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1995-07-10
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/*******************NOTE****************************/
This text file contains the text elements of the
file PMPRO.INF. The PMPRO.INF file can be viewed
using the VIEW command of OS/2, or by double-clicking
on its icon on your OS/2 system. It contains screen
shots and other graphical elements to give you a
better introduction to PMPro.
/***************************************************/
We are pleased to announce the availability of the PMPro
Prolog Interpreter (v 1.01 ) for OS/2. This new product provides the
full power of the Prolog language at a very low cost. Its
user interface is tightly integrated with the OS/2 workplace.
It provides a powerful and user-friendly environment for
learning Prolog, or developing professional calibre Prolog
programs. The Prolog engine can be run separately from the
user interface, and can be connected to your own OS/2
programs.
See also:
o Features.
o Prolog's advantages
o Version information
o Future releases
o Technical support
o Price and ordering
.**************************************************
Features
PMPro contains a Prolog language interpreter which has
been embedded in custom products for several years. For the
first time, this Prolog is available to OS/2 users and
developers with a Presentation Manager user interface
and an easily embeddable inference engine. Among its many
features are:
o A full suite of Prolog standard predicates.
o Extensive context-sensitive help system.
o Example programs you can run, trace and modify immediately.
o OS/2 drag and drop integration for window colours and fonts.
o OS/2 file drag and drop integration for Prolog
database consultation.
o Prolog Code file type template and associations.
o A graphical user interface with response, trace, and debug
windows, and a dialog window which saves all previous queries
for fast re-submission.
o Automatic inter-session memory of window options and placement.
o Simple logging of interactive sessions (useful to certify
testing of predicates under development).
o Mathematical operators enhanced for vector operations.
o Additional predicates for basic statistical operations.
o Real-number math.
o Fully 32-bit implementation.
o Inference engine and response daemon communicate through
named pipes which are easily specified as program parameters.
OS/2 multitasking is thus exploited to provide responsive user
interaction as well as simplicity and flexibility when
embedding the engine.
o User interface and engine can reside on separate machines in
any network with OS/2 named pipe support.
.***********************************
Prolog's advantages
Prolog is a declarative language. By stating the facts and
rules which relate objects in the problem domain to each other,
you constuct your Prolog program. Its meaning is the set of
logical consequences of these program statements, and this is
computed by the inference engine at run-time.
You do not have to be concerned with telling the machine how
to solve the problem, nor where to put data in
memory. This allows you to concentrate on the problem at hand
rather than on software concerns.
Scoping rules are simple and uniform in Prolog, and declaration of
variable names is not required. This reduces code size and
opportunities for error.
Prolog programs tend to be from five to ten times smaller than the
equivalent procedural programs. This reduces the opportunity for
human error and reduces maintenance cost.
Prolog is not specifically for Artificial Intelligence. It is
a powerful general-purpose programming language with efficient
implementations available on most computing platforms today.
You can use PMPro to enter the world of Prolog programming at
a low initial cost, or to mix Prolog subsystems
into your own systems. You may find the Prolog approach so
useful that you will want to move to a Prolog compiler for
your next major system.
Prolog has a history of use for linguistics research and
natural language processing. While voice capture technology
has solved the problem of translating sounds into
phonemes and words, procedural languages (including
object-oriented ones) have not provided a productive way of
adding natural language "smarts" to your programs. This is
one of Prolog's strengths, and is the reason we have chosen
Mariah, a loquacious African Grey parrot, as our logo
for PMPro.
Mariah already has a great deal more language processing and
context recognition power than your computer, but you can close
the gap by using Prolog in your systems.
Natural language interaction is the next great revolution
in user interface design. The low-level problems have already
been solved by speech recognition libraries like ICSS for OS/2.
But using these libraries just to navigate menus is a waste.
Give your programs the power to treat the word stream as
language, by building PMPro into your systems!
.***********************************
Version Information
The inference engine used in PMPro has proved itself
over several years of use and enhancement in custom
embedded applications. These include knowledge-based
simulation systems, multimedia presentation systems with
embedded rule-based capability, natural language
subsystems and expert systems.
The current release has been enabled for OS/2 named
pipes and provided with a new OS/2 PM Graphical User Interface.
The components have all been re-designated starting from
Version 1.0 despite the main engine's longer history.
See Future releases for a discussion of the future
directions of PMPro.
.***********************************
Future releases
Registered licence holders will receive service releases and
upgrades free for a period of one year from the date of
purchase. Because of the low price of PMPro, shipping on
these free upgrades will be payable by the licence holder.
Future releases will include some or all of the following
features, though specific dates and packaging have not been
announced. Your opinion on the scheduling of release
of these features is welcomed:
o DLL packaging of the embeddable feature.
o SOM object packaging of the embeddable feature and the user
interface components.
o An open external DLL interface for accessing third-party DLLs
from within Prolog code.
o A suite of GUI system-supplied predicates.
o Grammar rule handling by the system's parser (grammar rules
are currently handled through the definite clause grammar
translation example program which is provided).
.***********************************
Technical support
Technical support for PMPro is provided via CompuServe
Information Service.
Log on to CompuServe and type GO OS2AVEN at the prompt.
Once in the OS2AVEN forum, select Other Vendors (section 1), and
leave technical questions in a forum message. The messages are
scanned daily and one-day (in some cases same-day)
turnaround for replies can be expected.
Those connected only to the Internet may place technical questions
in a mail message to:
76159.1166@compuserve.com
Those with no email connection may call 1-613-749-7984.
.***********************************
Price and ordering
PMPro is available at $50 US plus shipping charges
($5 US for first class mail and $10 US for UPS Courier)
from the following source:
Gregory Bourassa
P.O. Box 27038,
Gloucester, Ontario,
Canada, K1J 9L9
Tel (613) 749-7984 Fax (613) 749-6619
email 76150.1166@compuserve.com
Payment can be made by cheque or postal money order.
Please provide your full shipping address with your order.
Special prices are available for volume purchases.
Re-distribution of the embeddable inference engine is
royalty-free provided the product of which it forms a
sub-system is not a direct competitor to PMPro's development
environment.
Please call for information.
.***********************************