Abstract

This paper describes a working prototype system which uses descriptions of standard Prolog techniques to provide a basic techniques editing system, ultimately intended for use by novice programmers. A notation for representing techniques, based on Definite Clause Grammars, is described in the context of previous theoretical work by Kirschenbaum, Lakhotia and Sterling. Details are supplied of a mechanism for using these techniques to provide guidance during program construction and an example is provided of the system in operation. I conclude by suggesting the extensions needed in order to make the prototype useful for practical applications. 1 Introduction Many people have expressed an interest in supplying software tools which will make Prolog programming easier and/or more efficient. Most of the effort of implementation seems to have been directed at the debugging phase and there seem to be very few implementations of systems which provide help with the initial construction of progr...

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