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OS/2 Help File
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1996-08-31
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197KB
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197 lines
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. Introducing PMPro Prolog for OS/2 ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
We are pleased to announce the availability of the PMPro Prolog Interpreter (v
1.03) 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:
Features
Prolog's advantages
Version information
Future releases
Technical support
Price and ordering
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. Features ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
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 PMPro Prolog's many features are:
A full suite of Prolog standard predicates.
Extensive context-sensitive help system.
Drag-drop consultation and reconsultation of files (see screen shot
above).
Example programs you can run, trace and modify immediately.
OS/2 drag and drop integration for window colours and fonts.
Prolog Code file type template and associations.
A graphical user interface with response, trace, and debug windows, and a
dialog window which saves all previous queries for fast re-submission.
Automatic inter-session memory of window options and placement.
Simple logging of interactive sessions (useful to certify testing of
predicates under development).
Mathematical operators enhanced for vector operations.
Additional predicates for basic statistical and trigonometric operations.
Real-number math.
Fully 32-bit implementation.
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.
User interface and engine can reside on separate machines in any network
with OS/2 named pipe support.
Access to OS/2 extended file attributes from rules.
Ability to launch programs and sessions from rules.
Ability to load third-party DLLs and call their entry points from within
rules.
Direct access to OS/2 Multimedia capabilities from within rules.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Prolog's advantages ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
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!
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. Version Information ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
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.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 5. Future releases ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
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:
DLL packaging of the embeddable feature.
SOM object packaging of the embeddable feature and the user interface
components.
A suite of GUI system-supplied predicates.
Grammar rule handling by the system's parser (grammar rules are currently
handled through the definite clause grammar translation example program
which is provided).
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 6. Technical support ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
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:
76150.1166@compuserve.com
Those with no email connection may call 1-613-749-7984.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7. Price and ordering ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
PMPro is available at $50 US plus shipping charges ($5 US for first class mail,
$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.