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From: bundy@edxa@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Request for Information on Intelligent Front Ends
Message-ID: <12579@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Oct-83 19:04:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12579
Posted: Thu Oct 13 19:04:24 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Oct-83 08:43:30 EDT
Lines: 24

From:  BUNDY HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) <bundy@edxa>


        The UK government has set up a the Alvey Programme as the UK
answer to the Japanese 5th Generation Programme.  One part of that
Programme has been to identify and promote research in a number of
'themes'.  I am the manager of one such theme - on 'Intelligent Front
Ends' (IFE).  An IFE is defined as follows:

"A front end to an existing software package, for example a finite
element package, a mathematical modelling system, which provides a
user-friendly interface (a "human window") to packages which without
it, are too complex and/or technically incomprehensible to be
accessible to many potential users.  An intelligent front end builds a
model of the user's problem through user-oriented dialogue mechanisms
based on menus or quasi-natural language, which is then used to
generate suitably coded instructions for the package."

        One of the theme activities is to gather information about
IFEs, for instance:  useful references and short descriptions of
available tools.  If you can supply such information then please send it
to BUNDY@RUTGERS.  Thanks in advance.

                Alan Bundy