bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The MACSYMA system for formula manipulation
Authors: Moses J.
Published: January 2007

MACSYMA is a large LISP system which performs symbolic manipulations such as differentiation, simplification, integration and solution of equations with parametric coefficients. After exhibiting various examples of the system, we shall present some of the data representations used by MACSYMA to model abstract algebraic structures such as polynomial rings.

Two references are given for those wishing more introductory information about MACSYMA.
A toolbox for APL programmers
Authors: Metzger Robert C.
Published: January 2007

A set of programming tools for APL programmers is described. One group of tools helps the reader understand APL by taking advantage of special features of communication terminals, as well as using nontraditional approaches toward program listings, and nonverbal communication methods. Another group of tools rewrites portions of APL programs in order to eliminate stumbling blocks to effective communication.
APL/Z80
Authors: Howland John E. , Cleave Philip Van
Published: January 2007

An APL interpreter for Z80 microcomputers is described. APL/Z80 extends APL applications to the realm of low-cost personal computers. For example, APL/Z80 can be configured to run on Z80 systems with video console, 28K byte workspace, dual floppy disks for less than $6500.00. The power of such an APL system is comparable to APL on a large time sharing computer for many applications.
APL and the Grzegorczyk hierarchy
Authors: Breidbart Seth
Published: January 2007

We show in this paper that the set of “traditional” APL l-liners (using arithmetic functions only) compute precisely the set of functions in the class E4 of the Grzegorczyk hierarchy (the class immediately above the elementary functions). We also show that if we extend the set of 1-liners to include either the “execute” operator, or 1 line programs with gotos, then any partial recursive function can be computed.
An overlaying method for the effective organisation of APL systems
Authors: Crossley A D , Streeter G R
Published: January 2007

A system has been developed to manage the workspace with an application operating under its control. The system, known as PROGRAMSYSTEM, utilises a novel overlaying technique to limit workspace contents to those which are pertinent to the current processing task.

Having been evolved over the past two years, it is currently managing three large operational applications in different organisations, using Sharp APL and Xerox APL.

The paper briefly reviews some popular workspace-management methods using program files, and introduces the concept of Sharp-APL 'packages' on which PROGRAMSYSTEM was based. A characteristic of conventional methods is the use of a directory reference table to locate required objects on the program file. PROGRAMSYSTEM dispenses with this relatively expensive approach. Instead, small functions are generated for the application, which directly reference overlays on a program file; by localising overlay contents within these functions, they are automatically removed from the workspace on termination.

The methodology is explained in detail, and demonstrated by example. The structure of the program file is described, including the additional facilities supported by PROGRAMSYSTEM, these being: collection of cost statistics, handling of graphics and terminal characteristics, and extensive automatic documentation capabilities.
APL modeling of DeMorgan algebras
Authors: Reed Terence J.
Published: January 2007

Boolean algebras, whose elements are represented as vectors of bits, have been augmented with a “don't care” value by circuit theorists. Such an augmented algebra, with its operations appropriately extended, is called DeMorgan algebra. Various APL models of these algebras are presented and functions on them discussed. Applications include functions on three-element sets, simplification of Boolean functions, decomposition of Boolean functions, and extensions to Lukasiewicz algebras.
Steps toward an APL compiler
Authors: Wiedmann Clark
Published: January 2007

Compilation of APL programs could yield a dramatic improvement in performance for some kinds of programs, provided that the compiler could simplify the processing to the actual requirements of the particular algorithm. Other optimization approaches have been unable to achieve the performance improvements that seem to be possible. Compilation aided by declarations has been demonstrated, but it is undesirable to require declarations if most of the information they contain can be deduced by inspection of the program. Certain changes and restrictions to the language would make such deduction feasible by simplifying the analysis of control flow and removing apparent interfaces between programs that are not actually used as interfaces. Some of the proposed language changes are regarded as improvements because they facilitate deductions about programs by humans and therefore contribute to program readability and reliability. The other restrictions are inconvenient when debugging a program, but the impact is minimal because compilation of APL would be appropriate mainly for production programs that already have been tested.
On the locus of program flow within and among secondary functions
Authors: Foster Garth H.
Published: January 2007

Several authors have considered the problem of control of program flow in secondary (user-written) functions in APL and forms which would give APL equivalents of the control structures of more traditional languages have been proposed. Rather than expanding or altering the means of controlling program flow in APL, this paper suggests restricting the forms, but not the power, of branching. The motivation and implications are presented and the advantages and disadvantages are weighed. Problems of migration of functions and questions regarding the resumption of suspended functions are considered. Consideration of function call and the system variable, @@@@
LC
, suggests a generalization of secondary-function execution with regard to program flow among user-written functions. This provides an alternate view of suspended functions and permits branching to be generalized to include co-routines.
Operators and uniform forms
Authors: Keenan Douglas J.
Published: January 2007

A syntax for operators is formally defined. This formalization permits an extension to current operators and the introduction of new operators, two of which are proposed. The new operators, in conjunction with generalized uniform forms, are shown to have great power, allowing, among other things, easy manipulation of nested arrays.
A programming technique for non-rectangular data
Authors: Smith Bob
Published: January 2007

A programming technique is developed to deal with certain common operations on non-rectangular (ragged) data. A representation of such data in current
APL
is defined; a notation for applying primitive functions to this data is developed; and user-defined functions that simulate these operations for certain primitive monadic functions are illustrated.
An interactive APL simulation of hospital critical-care units
Authors: Segal Donald
Published: January 2007

This paper presents an actual case study of the design and implementation of a sizing methodology for Critical-Care nursing units. The results from the unit sizing, which employed a simulation technique programmed in APL, provided the basis for the renovation of the Critical-Care area. The model is an interactive, discrete-event, digital simulator of the Critical-Care unit of a general short-stay hospital. The design is based on the concept that the policies which govern patient admissions, bed-use flexibility, and patient transfers will affect both achievable occupancy and the number of forced transfers that will result.
Interactive simulation gaming for energy-policy analysis
Authors: Blair Peter D.
Published: January 2007

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multiple player interactive simulation game in APL for use in education, policy analysis and planning in energy-environment related systems. The “Regional Energy-Environment Game” makes use of APLSV's shared-variable feature to establish communication links between players as well as to provide an interface between these players and an analytical model of an energy-environment system.
Information retrieval with APL by adaptive index and user guidance
Authors: Schek Hans-Joerg , Walch Georg
Published: January 2007

A system is described applicable for information retrieval and update both in formatted and unformatted files containing non-numerical data. It uses a new reference-string indexing technique which supports partial-match queries and similar-record search. The reference-string index is adapted to data usage or data. Those parts of records which are estimated by the program to be specified very often in queries are included as reference strings and inverted. For data access in the retrieval phase, the specified attribute values and their logical expressions are transformed into a logical expression between reference strings. Primary and secondary (index) data are stored as external files using auxiliary processors for access. The retrieval and update functions are combined with the user-guidance component used to describe data (dictionary), to teach system use, and to assist as a permanently available Help feature. As an internal structure it uses a semantic net to navigate the user from general to more specific information. A new interesting feature is the use of selected reference strings and selected combinations of them as a more detailed data description extracted automatically from the data or even data usage.
An APL-total interface
Authors: Mayforth Rick
Published: January 2007

A description is made of an interface between Control Data's APL2 and Cincom's TOTAL data base manager. The areas discussed are: organization of TOTAL data bases, the interface to APL2, the interface to the APL user, and comments on the use of this system. It was found that the difference in costs between coding a moderately sized application in COBOL and APL was enough to pay for implementing the interface, with savings remaining after that.
X3J3 meeting, November 1987
Authors: Reid John
Published: January 2007

This meeting was primarily concerned with agreeing responses to comments made by X3 members with their ballots. In addition, some editorial changes were agreed, as were some minor technical corrections. A decision was made not to work on major proposals at this time in order to concentrate on improving the present draft.
Pointer functionality Sans data-type
Authors: Schonfelder L. , Morgan S.
Published: January 2007

This paper is based on lengthy discussions at recent meetings of X3J3 within the Data Concepts Subgroup. The Subgroup considered in detail how to provide most of the functionality of pointers by the approach suggested in Burch's paper [Ed note: See Fortran Forum, October 1987, page 18]. That is, by using the facilities of IDENTIFY and ALLOCATE/DEALLOCATE, and by relaxing restrictions on the use of the attributes ALLOCATABLE and ALIAS. The paper is a general description of the facility and the required syntax and semantics to implement it consistently in Fortran 8X; it does not give details of editorial changes to the Draft Standard that would be required. Since these would be extensive and intricate, it was not considered reasonable to attempt them without a high probablility of consensus in X3J3.
Examples of Maple applied to problems from the American Mathematical Monthly
Authors: Gonnet Gaston H.
Published: January 2007

The following pages show the output of the Maple system applied to some selected problems from the Problem Section of the American Mathematical Monthly. The purpose of assembling these examples is to show some of the facilities and commands of the Maple system. These examples were run on our Vax 11/785 computer, under the Unix operating system. This is a rather random sample, and does not represent a systematic search of problems in the AMM.
Commentary on: solving symbolic equations with PRESS
Authors: Fateman Richard , Bundy Alan , O'Keefe Richard , Sterling Leon
Published: January 2007

The paper "Solving Symbolic Equations with PRESS", by Sterling, Bundy, Byrd, O'Keefe and Silver [Sterling
et al
82], describes a program PRESS (PROLOG Equation Solving System) which solves some symbolic, transcendental, non-differential equations. The problem of solving such equations is divided into two levels, a
meta-level
which is intended as a research vehicle for exploring search strategies in mathematical reasoning and a set of
equation-solving modules
used initially for the MECHO [Bundy
et al
79] system (a project which aims to solve high-school mechanics problems stated in English.)
Admissible term orderings used in computer algebra systems
Authors: Kredel Heinz
Published: January 2007

Recently a discusion on correctness of Gröbner bases computation arised with H. M. Möller. We found that almost any implementation of Buchberger's algorithm to compute Gröbner bases defines and uses its own ordering of power products. We summarize the definitions of the most important ones, and include 4 examples to illustrate the differencies.
Comment on some recent comments on information retrieval
Authors: Meadow Charles T.
Published: January 2007

This paper presents some opinions on how the human user's understanding of the content and meaning of records and of the criteria for reterieval must be considered in formulating a complete theory of information reterieval.
Toward hypertext publishing
Authors: Hanson Robin
Published: January 2007

Hypertext publishing, the integration of a very large body of public writings into a unified hypertext environment, will require the simultaneous solution of problems involving very wide database distribution, copyright, freedom of speech, privacy, and information overload. This paper describes these problems and presents, for criticism and discussion, an abstract design called LinkText which seems to solve many of them. LinkText is presented both as a specification and as design approaches grouped around various levels of electronic publishing.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Authors: BRAZIER F. M. T. , BEISHUIZEN J. J.
Published: January 2007

The design of a user interface for the retrieval of information should entail the consideration of (1) the user's system expertise, domain expertise and individual preferences for strategy, (2) the interaction required - task requirements, forms of representation, help and explanation facilities, and (3) the domain - relationships between entities, the structure of the database.
AUTOMATIC FORMAL VERIFICATION OF DIGITAL SYSTEMS USING PROLOG
Authors: Brezocnik Zmago , Horvat Bogomir
Published: January 2007

An approach for automatic formal verification of digital hardware designs named VERDIS is presented. Validation of design correctness is made by formal proof as an alternative to the traditional approach which utilizes simulation. A hardware design methodology based on this framework entails:a) writing a specification of required design,b) designing a circuit intended to implement it,c) proving mathematically that the design meets its specification.
KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM FOR SUPPORTING STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Authors: Gabor Andras , Barna Gyula
Published: January 2007

The national account system is one of the most important tools of macro-economic decision making. In assembling the balances, a very important requirement is to ensure consistency. The main problem is the following: qualitative information are necessary to maintain the reliability of the balances. Because of several sources of data, several kind of data manipulation, use of current and fix prices, etc., the qualitative information are not consistent, and they contradict to the quantitative information as well. This inconsistency usually is invisible to the experts, partly because of the complexity and partly by the magnitude of the relevant information. As a result, the national account system is becoming unstable.
TEXTVISION: A SOFTWARE TOOL TO VISUALIZE CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE USING THE HYPERTEXT METAPHOR
Authors: Kommers Piet
Published: January 2007

Besides the traditional tutoring paradigm (question and answer game between pupil and teaching device), many new C.A.L. programs (Computer Aided Learning) heavily rely on free exploration. Though many good examples show us that exploration can have a deep learning effect, it is quite the question how far guided instruction can be substituted by discovery learning, and by self monitoring of the student.
HITEXS: A CONTEXT-SENSITIVE INTERFACE FOR COOPERATIVE HUMAN-MACHINE FAULT DIAGNOSIS; BUILDING OPERATOR TOOLS FOR NASA'S SPACE STATION THERMAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Authors: Roske-Hofstrand Renate , Remington Roger
Published: January 2007

With the increasing use of modern, dialogue-based systems, a systematic and efficient software development has become more and more important. This abstract deals with a number of tools that have been developed at our department to support the design process of interactive systems.
TOOLS FOR INTERACTIVE SYSTEM DESIGN
Authors: Weule Hartmut , Loffler Lukas
Published: January 2007

Our interface development project describes several unique requirements for the human-computer interface for situations where one or more expert systems are integrated into a process environment. Our prototype for the Human Interface to the Thermal Expert System, HITEXS, is build in Intellicorp's KEE environment and consists of a set of tools which assist the operator in verifying expert system diagnoses. Our design ideas grew out of the metaphor of a knowledgeable assistant. This suggested the following capabilities for our interface:(1) Routine operations must be handled with ease(2) Information needs to be filtered, e.g. only relevant and important knowledge should be conveyed(3) The interface must brief, advise, remind the user(4) The interface must be able to explain the actions of the expert system(5) The interface must be able to accept for execution detailed assignments based on high-level instructionsOur goal is to instantiate these characteristics and thus demonstrate state-of-the-art human interface design; e.g. we are developing an interface that is both sensitive to the needs of the user and responsive to the physical system context.
Book review: The Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. by Michael R. Genesereth and Nils Nilsson (Morgan Kaufmann 1987)
Authors: Smith Michael P.
Published: January 2007

This book is an updated version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation[1]. In this book, the author presents an abstract model for parallel execution of logic programs and attempts to define a framework for implementing parallel interpreters. The author describes the research in three layers of abstraction: theory, operation, and implementation. At the theory level, the author discusses syntax, semantics, and control strategies for logic programming and Prolog. For the operation level, the author presents his AND/OR Process Model and an updated survey of related work. For the implementation level, he describes implementation techniques for interpreters based on the specification of the abstract model. The book is divided into seven chapters as follows:
Book review: EXPERT SYSTEMS 1987 Assessment of Technology and Applications by Terri C. Walker and Richard K. Miller (SEAl Technical Publications)
Authors: Iodice Elaine
Published: January 2007

Just a few years ago expert systems emerged from the AI laboratories and quickly became an important aspect of the computer industry. Once the province of the universities and a few high-powered industrial research centers, expert systems are now being applied to a multitude of fields. Spurred on by such funding sources as ESPRIT in Europe, ALVEY in the UK and the 5th Generation Project in Japan, AI has not only made its way into the market through its offspring expert systems, but shows every sign of becoming a major growth area in the next decade. From just a handful of companies in 1983, the number of companies now involved in the development of expert systems has grown exponentially. This growth is no more evident than in the history of the publication being reviewed here. SEAI published their first Inventory of Expert Systems in January of 1984. At that time there were 136 programs. The 1986 publication listed 475. In 1987 that number has more than doubled.
Socrates: a system to extract rules and knowledge from existing databases
Authors: Ferrara F. M.
Published: January 2007

As a reference for both academic and industrial researchers, this new series reports the latest contributions of engineering, applied physics, and computer science to robotics. Each volume will focus one key topic in robotics research. The initial volume fully explores the applications of algorithm design and computational geometry to automatic planning and control functions.
Book review: Prolog for Programmers by Feliks Kluzniak and Stanislaw Szpakowicz (Academic Press)
Authors: Kalin Marty
Published: January 2007

Prolog for Programmers
(PP) delivers what it promises by introducing Prolog to programmers from other languages; I know of no better introduction for this audience. (The dialect used is a slight variant of DEC-10 Prolog.) Yet even the experienced Prolog programmer can gain from PP's first-rate treatment of data structures, control, programming techniques, and implementation. The style is clear and concise, and a dry wit makes it fun to read. PP could be used as language text in an introductory Al course; for example, we have used it along with Genesereth and Nilsson's
Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence.
PP also addresses broader issues such as language extensibility with a chapter on definite-clause grammars; database with a case study of relational databases in Prolog; planning with an analysis of a STRIPS problem in WARPLAN; and implementation and optimization with a discussion of the authors' own Prolog interpreter. PP furnishes source for the interpreter and case studies in listings as well as on a floppy diskette.
A constraint approach to mastermind in logic programming
Authors: van Hentenryck Pascal
Published: January 2007

Logic programming is a convenient tool for stating combinatorial problems due to its nondeterminism and its relational form. It is not surprising that simple and declarative programs can be written for problems like mastermind. However, due to their search strategy, logic languages are also very inefficient for solving the natural formulation of problems. Moving away from this natural formulation leads to much programming effort and to less modifable and extensible programs. This paper shows, on the mastermind example, that it is possible to write very declarative programs which will be executed efficiently by an extended logic programming language. The key idea is to embed consistency techniques inside logic programming. Within this approach, constraints are used actively to prune the search space in an "a priori" way instead of the passive way (for testing values) of usual languages. The resulting program outperforms all the proposed algorithms and achieves a speed-up of 40 over Shapiro's program in the average and a speed-up of 72 on Powers' benchmark.
A case study in computational science
Authors: Fulda Joseph S.
Published: January 2007

The purpose of this paper is to present the close relationship between mathematical modeling and computer simulation as a paradigm of computational science, by reviewing a case study in mathematical biology.
A deterministic prediction model for the American game of football
Authors: Trono John A.
Published: January 2007

This article describes a simulation model of the sport known as football. It was created to predict results of post season football games, most notably college bowl games. By constructing a totally deterministic model of the game, one in which there are no random events, and by using data that is directly accessible to represent the participants, an objective prediction can be reached. The remainder of this paper is divided as follows: Section 2 discusses more about the model's internal workings; Section 3 describes the all-important play selection strategy; Section 4 presents the results collected for verifying the model's accuracy; and finally Section 5 presents some observations and shortcomings of the model along with possible directions for further investigation.
Book review: The Art of Prolog Advanced Programming Techniques by L. Sterling and E. Shapiro (The MIT Press)
Authors: Marek Witkor
Published: January 2007

PROLOG, logic programming based languages, became very popular in the eighties, taking a circuitous route to the United States; from Europe to Japan to mainstream American computer science.
Socrates: a project integrating human science with computer science
Authors: Vogel Carl M.
Published: January 2007

This paper regards a project whose design objective was a synthesis of two perspectives on the use of computers in education. Computers may be used to educate, and people may be educated to use computers. Socrates is a project in the area of expert systems development. It was designed to be a workable tool in the field of abnormal psychology, but the educational setting was prominent during the design process. The tool chosen for development was a diagnostic expert system capable of producing a valid, reliable diagnosis on Axes I and III of the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,
Third Edition (DSM-III) of alcohol-use related maladaptive behavior patterns. The development of Socrates was approached using some of the perspectives that software engineers bring to the development of complex software systems. However, using algorithmic tools to solve a problem that is answerable only through heuristics renders those tools less useful. The system, implemented in PROLOG, was constructed from complex functional representations of data. Data flow diagrams (DFDs) tended to distort the exact picture of the system's functioning. If we simply rename the tool "Logical Instantiation Diagram" (LID), the psychological limitations of DFD's are eliminated since there is no longer any demand to adhere to DFD convention. Naturally, a project of this complexity involves the programmers very deeply in the implementation environment. PROLOG was studied as an applicative programming language, and yet it was discovered that it is possible to force procedurality onto PROLOG. The bridge between learning about expert system development and integrating the domain of a particular system is knowledge engineering. Here the emphasis is not on specialized programming techniques, but on the programmer's ability to reason inside the problem domain and to communicate that reasoning through the language at hand, be it LFD's actual PROLOG code, or the code of some other computer language. The knowledge engineer will come to recognize ways of thinking that are perhaps not included in a traditional programming discipline. Socrates is more than a project in expert system design; it is a study of learning. The project progressed from difficulties in representing ambiguous situations unambiguously to the recognition that the chief domain document is flawed inherently, as is any system which applies a finite number of classifications to an infinite number of possibilities. We propose Socrates as a model of liberal arts education. As a study of knowledge engineering it unites two distinct disciplines in a program of joint discovery. In working on Socrates we were able to develop specific ideas about the nature of our implementation, we made observations about the environment in which we were working, and finally, we were able to generalize the tools used in other areas of software development adapting them effectively to our own uses.
Book review: Artificial Intelligence and Tutoring Systems by Etienne Wenger (Morgan Kaufman 1987)
Authors: Tyler Sherman W.
Published: January 2007

A number of publications have appeared recently to fill in the time gap since the first major compendium of intelligent tutoring systems was published in 1982 (Intelligent Tutoring Systems by Sleeman and Brown). These have included books by Clancey (Knowledge-based Tutoring: The GUIDON System), by Lawler and Yazdani (Artificial Intelligence and Education) and by Kearsley (Artificial Intelligence and Instruction: Applications and Methods), as well as an article in the Annual Review of Computer Science by Clancey on qualitative student models. However, each of these works has been either an edited collection of writings by a number of authors on their various systems, or has focused on one system or one primary aspect of intelligent tutoring systems. The book by Wenger is unique in that it offers an overview of the entire field by a single author, thereby providing a perspective and a coherence lacking in other works.
Presentation Planning Using an Integrated Knowledge Base
Authors: Arens Yigal , Miller Lawrence , Sondheimer Norman
Published: January 2007

ISI is involved in user interface research aimed at bringing together multiple input and output modes in a way that handles mixed mode input (commands, menus, forms, natural language), interacts with a diverse collection of underlying software utilities in a uniform way, and presents the results through a combination of output modes including natural language text, maps, charts and graphs. Our system, Integrated Interfaces, derives much of its ability to interact uniformly with the user and the underlying services and to build its presentations, from the information present in a central knowledge base. This knowledge base integrates modes of: the application domain (Navy ships in the Pacific region, in the current demonstration version); the structure of visual displays and their graphical features; the underlying services (data bases and expert systems); and interface functions. The emphasis in this paper is on a presentation planner that uses the knowledge base to produce multi-modal output. There has been a flurry of recent work in user interface management systems (we list several recent examples in the references). Existing work is characterized by an attempt to relieve the software designer of the burden of handcrafting an interface for each application. The work has generally focused on intelligently handling input. In our paper we deal with the other end of the pipeline - presentations.
Explicit Models in Intelligent Interface Design
Authors: Mason James A. , Edwards Jack L.
Published: January 2007

AI has made significant advances in the design of graphical knowledge-based interfaces. One type of knowledge-based interface, the graphical model editor, extends the "toolkit notion of interface", exemplified by Bill Budge's Pinball Constructor Set 1. In these interfaces, "the desired operations are done simply by moving the appropriate icons onto the screen and connecting them together. Connecting the icons is the equivalent of writing a program... There are no hidden operations, no syntax of command names to learn." 2) The end user can quickly, and with minimal training, build up a description of a complex structural model, run that model to observe its behavior, and then modify the structure if desired. The user of this class of interface never needs to be aware of the complexities of the internal representations that actually support the model.AI has contributed flexible tools for building these interfaces such as Impulse 3) the steamer graphics editor, 4) and KEE pictures TM5, as well as representation techniques that facilitate mapping a complex domain model onto a graphical interface. However, the class of text editors known as structure editors can also serve as a useful analogy for extending our understanding of graphical model editors.In this paper, we will first define what we mean by graphical knowledge-based structure editors and then discuss one class of structure editors, those that can be built using SimKit TM, a general tool for building model editors. We will then speculate about the specific types of knowledge typically represented in knowledge-based structure editors and the appropriate graphical metaphors for presenting that knowledge.
The Design of a Cooperative Respondent
Authors: Cheikes Brant A. , Webber Bonnie Lynn
Published: January 2007

In this paper we discuss a phenomenon we call integration discontinuity. Bringing together two components of a computer system seldom produces a seamless joint. Tacking on a "front end" to a finished application often produces poor user interfaces. Developing a functioning application from a finished user interface may compromise system design or imply functionality the system cannot supply. If a new modality is introduced into a developed user interface, the behavior it allows may overlap the existing behavior of the interface in unfavorable ways, and it may change the user's model of system behavior. We discuss integration discontinuity as it occurs between system components, interface modalities, and user's models a system before and after a new interface mechanism is introduced.
A Dialogue Model for User Interfaces
Authors: Young Robert L.
Published: January 2007

One feature of "intelligent" interaction is cooperation. Whenever possible, a cooperative respondent tries to recognize and accommodate its reply to a questioner's goals, plans, and needs. That reply may thus combine several forms of cooperative behavior, such as answering the question in natural language, displaying an explanatory picture, and/or performing a helpful action. The attempt to build cooperative systems confronts designers with the integration problem: how to organize systems that integrate potentially many diverse kinds of cooperative behavior. In this paper, we consider how solving the integration problem might affect the architecture of systems that generate cooperative responses.
Graphics and Natural Language as Components of Automatic Explanation
Authors: Roth Steven F. , Mattis Joe , Mesnar Xavier
Published: January 2007

An important component of adaptable interactive systems is the ability to model the system's users. Previous systems have relied on user models tailored to the particular needs of that system alone. This paper presents the notion of a general user model, and describes some of our research on building a general user modelling facility that could be used by a variety of applications. This work focuses on the representation, maintenance, and acquisition issues of modelling long-term beliefs of the user, and describes a general facility for accomplishing these tasks.
Search Architectures for the Automatic Design of Graphical Presentations
Authors: Mackinlay Jock
Published: January 2007

This paper presents an approach for automatically creating explanations of changes in the results generated by quantitative modeling systems. These explanations combine both text and graphics, and therefore serve as a vehicle for exploring the interaction between these two modes of presentation. The approach integrates research from three different areas. Relevant content for explanations is determined using extensions of previous work on comparative analysis of financial models. Discourse planning is performed by applying techniques of rhetorical modeling to the analysis of explanatory dialogues. Graphical presentation is accomplished by extending prior work on automatically designing displays for quantitative data. Finally, this paper presents an approach to coordinating textual and graphical presentations.
General User Modelling
Authors: Kass Robert , Finin Tim
Published: January 2007

A strawman conceptual architecture is proposed for knowledge-based systems that design their own graphical interfaces. The architecture is conceived of partly as an elaboration of the Seeheim model for user interfaces, but differs from it in several fundamental ways. The Seeheim model describes a class of fully realized, modular interfaces, without addressing how the interface itself is created. In contrast, we make explicit provision for an initial phase in which the system creates its user interface. Application domain-specific knowledge is used to influence interface design and to determine both the content and style of the information presented. Unlike the Seeheim model, we also suggest that media independence is not desirable in the architecture's early stages.Two testbed systems that we have developed are discussed in terms of the proposed architecture. APEX designs and renders sequences of pictures that illustrate how to perform simple actions in a world of objects. GRIDS lays out displays containing text and pictures with which it is provided. Each emphasizes different components of the architecture.
Using Classification and Separation to Build Intelligent Interfaces
Authors: Szekely Pedro
Published: January 2007

One of the responsibilities of an intelligent interface is to design presentations of application information. An effective approach to this problem is to automatically search a space of possible designs. Since these design spaces are often large and complex, an important issue is how to control the search. This paper describes the search architecture used by the APT system for the automatic design of graphical presentations of relational information and discusses how it might be modified to handle more difficult design spaces.
The User Interface Design Environment
Authors: Foley James , Chul Won , Kovacevic Srdjan , Murray Kevin
Published: January 2007

The user-computer interface is often the major impediment to successful use of interactive computer graphics systems. Design of the interface is often thought of as art rather than science, and suffers from lack of formalisms, models, tools, and methodical design approaches. Slowly, the design process is becoming more structured, and more formal tools are becoming available.This paper describes the User Interface Design Environment (VIDE), a knowledge-based system to assist in user interface design and implementation. At the heart of UIDE is a representation of the conceptual design of a user interface. This design includes: the class hierarchy of objects which exist in the system (only single inheritance is currently supported), properties of the objects, actions which can be performed on the objects, units of information required by the actions, and pre- and post-conditions for the actions. The conceptual design and related information is used to: check the interface design for consistency and completeness via the Knowledge Acquisition In a Man-machine Interface system (KAIMI), transform the knowledge base, and hence the user interface it represents into a different but functionally-equivalent interface via the Transformation Algorithms system (TA), evaluate the interface design with respect to speed of use, with the keystroke Analysis Tool as input to a Simple User Interface Management System (SUIMS) which implements the user interface, automatically generate intelligent run-time help to the end-user via the Help Support system (HS), and produce a printed description of the design in the Interface Definition Language (IDL). IDL has been developed to present the conceptual design of the user interface in a structured and readable representation.UIDE goes beyond the capabilities of the typical User Interface Management System (UIMS), which requires the designer to work at the syntactic and lexical levels of design and hence to focus on command names, screen and icon design, menu organization, sequencing rules, and interaction techniques. UIDE provides a higher-level conceptual design tool that facilitates the iterative design process of specification, generation, and evaluation.
Notecards
Authors: Harp Brian , Neches Robert
Published: January 2007

Most current notecard systems don't take advantage of the semistructured nature of notes, making retrieval and analysis difficult and requiring manual maintenance of the notes contained in the system. In addition, all current notecard systems are self-contained forcing the user to maintain the relationships between notes and the domain knowledge bases. By exploiting the semistructured natural of notes, it is shown that notes can aid in several areas, including: capturing information not typically in intelligent systems, accessing that information, graceful degradation in intelligent systems, and reasoning using this additional knowledge. A system is proposed that contains structures for capturing semistructured information, a number of not types useful in reasoning in varied domains, and the control mechanisms necessary in a notecard environment. A prototype has been built and integrated with a knowledge base browsing tool, and is currently being expanded in capability as well as being integrated into a second domain.
Using AI Techniques to Create User Interfaces by Example
Authors: Myers Brad A.
Published: January 2007

Creating user interfaces is a very difficult task. Existing tools to help create user interfaces, called User Interface Management Systems (UIMSs) have typically been very difficult to use and have not addressed the modern, highly-interactive interfaces that are most desirable. Peridot, an experimental UIMS, uses programming by Example techniques to make the interface design task significantly easier. Peridot uses knowledge about the typical properties of user interfaces to generalize from the user interface designer's specific examples to create general-purpose parameterized programs. Peridot is a working prototype UIMS and has been successfully used by non-programmers to create interaction techniques such as menus, scroll bars, buttons, sliders, and iconic and title line window controls. In addition, it appears that expert users can create interfaces using Peridot significantly faster than by coding the interfaces by hand. Peridot created its own interface and can create most of the interaction techniques in the Macintosh Toolbox.
Relationships and Tasks in Scientific Research Collaboration
Authors: Kraut Robert E. , Galegher Jolene , Egido Carmen
Published: January 2007

In creating computer-based systems, we work within a perspective that shapes the design questions that will be asked and the kinds of solutions that are sought. This article introduces a perspective based on language as action, and explores its consequences for system design. We describe a communication tool called The Coordinator, which was designed from a language/action perspective; and we suggest how further aspects of coordinated work might be addressed in a similar style. The language/action perspective is illustrated with an example based on studies of nursing work in a hospital ward and contrasted to other currently prominent perspectives.
The Minimal Manual
Authors: Carroll John M. , Smith-Kerker Penny L. , Ford Jim R. , Mazur Sandra A.
Published: January 2007

The conceptual design of a comprehensive support system for operators of complex systems is presented. Key functions within the support system architecture include information management, error monitoring, and adaptive aiding. One of the central knowledge sources underlying this functionality is an operator model that involves a combination of algorithmic and symbolic models for assessing and predicting an operator's activities, awareness, intentions, resources, and performance. Functional block diagrams are presented for the overall architecture as well as the key elements within this architecture. A variety of difficult design issues are discussed and ongoing efforts aimed at resolving these issues are noted.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE BACKGROUND AND CURRENT STATUS OF THE HFS HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION STANDARDS COMMITTEE
Authors: Reed Paul
Published: January 2007

Since late 1985, the Human Factors Society (HFS) Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Standards Committee has been working to construct a framework for the development of guidelines and standards in the area of software ergonomics (which includes most software-defined aspects of human-computer interaction) in a manner which is consistent with the professional standards of the society.
CHI+GI '87 POSTER SESSION PAPERS AND ABSTRACTS
Authors: Marcus Aaron
Published: January 2007

At CHI+GI '87 in Toronto, April 5--9, approximately 60 poster presentations appeared on professional, well-lit exhibition panels on a large space conveniently located near the conference informal meeting area and the system demonstrations area. Paul Brennan of the conference staff arranged for and led the teams that set up this outstanding display environment. The form of presentation emphasized an "information bazaar. " During the conference reception, hundreds of people examined the poster exhibits and talked with all the presenters. Individual meetings took place during the remaining conference hours.The jurors for the selection of regular posters included: Tyler Blake, principal, Intuitive Software and Interactive Systems, Chatsworth, Calif.; Aaron Marcus, principal, Aaron Marcus and Associates, Berkeley, Calif.; David H. Miller, Bell Northern Research, Verxun, Que., Canada; and Bill Verplank, designer, ID2 Design Studio, San Francisco, Calif.The doctoral posters were supervised by Tom Carey, professor, Department of Computing Information Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., Canada.The October 1987 issue carried eleven; here are the ones received since then.
USER INTERFACE STRATEGIES FOR LARGE MAINTENANCE DATABASES
Authors: Chu Sai-Cheong
Published: January 2007

A large insurance company headquartered in the midwest is in the process of providing each of its agents with a computerized management information system. The system is designed to help with many different aspects of the agents job, ranging from office management to prospecting for new clients. This paper reports the results of a survey which was administered to assess the impact of the system on the first group of agents to receive it. The survey targeted very specific aspects of the system's hardware and software, as well as the training received by the agents.Results indicate that agents who are trained in the train-the-trainer format have poorly defined concepts about the functions of the system. In fact, 70% of the 42 system functions are used less than ten times per week. This is significantly lower than the performance of the same functions by hand prior to automation.Based on theories of learning and training program development, ten specific guidelines are provided for implementing a training program targeted at naive users in a corporate environment.
AN INTERFERENCE THEORY EXPLANATION OF RETENTION ERRORS
Authors: Engelbeck George , Polson Peter G.
Published: January 2007

We have extended Cognitive Complexity Theory (CCT) (Kieras and Polson, 1985) to provide an explanation of why some production rules are rememberd and others are forgotten. This explanation is based on interference theory.Inconsistent user-interfaces force users to learn different operations to accomplish common user goals. Such inconsistent knowlege is represented as two or more rules with common conditions and different actions. Let A represent the common condition and C and D represent different actions. The rules can be described as A-B and A-C which conform to a classical interference paradigm.Sixty subjects were traine to perform seven utility tasks on a popular, stand-alone, menu-based word processor. Subjects were brought back one day after the training session for a retention test. The retention test involved retraining subjects on the same set of utility tasks.Production rule models were written for all tasks. Each rule represents a step in one of the seven tasks. The rules were classified as A-B, A-C, or C-D rules. C-D rules are rules with a unique condition and action. The rule that appeared more frequently was predicted to interfere with the retention of the less frequent version of the rule (Postman & Underwood, 1973).Each step can be associated with a rule, and the number of errors were tobulated for each rule type. The overall probability of an error was .076. The observed probability of an error was .56 for the four low-frequency A-C rules. Over half the errors observed in this study were made or these four steps. The probability of an error on a low-frequency C-D rule was .005.