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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: 4-port debugger (was: Poor state of Mac Prologs)y
Message-ID: <6475@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 24 Jun 91 09:01:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: goanna.6475
References: <4055@n-kulcs.cs.kuleuven.ac.be> <1991Jun21.220758.7981@swift.cs.tcd.ie>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 24

In article <1991Jun21.220758.7981@swift.cs.tcd.ie>, brady@swift.cs.tcd.ie writes:
> What don't I like about the four port debugger.
> Well, I can't think of anything better, yet, but  the thing
> is that it's, well, procedural.

I don't see how the four-port debugger is particularly procedural.
It is a tool for walking around the proof tree.  Ok, you don't have
unrestricted access to the tree (though Dave Bowen wrote a debugger
at Edinburgh that showed you a lot more of the tree).  But how does
that make it procedural?

Ok, so what about Shapiro's Declarative Debugging (revised as
Rational debugging, or whatever)?

What about the DEC-10/Quintus Prolog "advice package" which lets you
check claims such as "every well formed call to this predicate has
such-and-such a property"?

> Maybe we can discuss this in Paris? Over some light refreshment?

Wish I could be there.

-- 
I agree with Jim Giles about many of the deficiencies of present UNIX.