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C00002 00002 This had been RLL.DIS[RDG,DBL]
C00003 00003 ∂20-Oct-80 1258 RDG RLL Bulletin Board
C00007 00004 ∂03-Nov-80 1518 RDG RLL BB, Message#2
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This had been RLL.DIS[RDG,DBL]
RDG@SAIL, CSD.LENAT@SCORE, CSD.SMITH@SCORE, CSD.GENESERETH@SCORE,
CSD.MOSTOW@SCORE, CSD.NOVAK@SCORE, ATP.HINES@UTEXAS-20,
PRESSBURGER@SCI, SUE@SCI, SKLEIN@USC-ISIB, QUAYLE@SUMEX,
KEIRSEY@USC-ECL, BSMITH@BBNG,
CSD.GARDNER@SCORE, STAN@SRI-KL, SASTRY@ISIF, KANDT@USC-ECL, RBECHTAL@BBNA,
ATP.HINES@UTEXAS-20,
RICK@RAND-AI, HENRY@RAND-AI, GORLIN@RAND-AI, KLAHR@RAND-AI, WESCOURT@RAND-AI,
CJOHNSON@SUMEX, RBRACHMAN@BBND,
BALZER@ISIB, ALAN@ISIB, PLONDON@ISIB, ERMAN@ISIB,
STT@SAIL,
STUDENT1@SUMEX, TKEHLER@BBNA,
CSD.PURDY@SCORE, DAVE@RAND-AI
∂20-Oct-80 1258 RDG RLL Bulletin Board
To: "@RLL.DIS[RDG,DBL]" at SU-AI
This message, addressed to people who have expressed an interest in
Representation Language Languages, marks the beginning of the RLL Bulletin
Board. Its purpose is to relay relevant ideas to people who are
interested in the concept of rlls, and their implementation.
My views are expressed in the "RLL-1: A Representation Language Language"
(HPP-80-9). This verbosely expands the article (of almost the same title)
which appears in the proceeding of the recent AAAI. By now you all should
have received a copy of this memo. Comments on both its content and form
will be greatly appreciated.
A companion memo, "The Details of RLL-1" (HPP-80-23), contains the
implementation-level facts necessary for people who actually want to use
our current implementation. This paper is now available -- please send me
a message if you would like a copy.
The first bona fide rll, MRS, (for Modifiable Representation System) is
almost totally designed. This system does many of the things I wantd
RLL-1 to do, correctly. Reqests for both documentation, and for access to
this program, should be addressed to its builders, Prof Micheal Genesereth
(CSD.GENESERETH@SCORE) or Dave Smith (CSD.SMITH@SCORE).
The RLL bulletin distribution list currently consists of
RDG@SAIL, CSD.LENAT@SCORE, CSD.SMITH@SCORE, CSD.GENESERETH@SCORE,
CSD.MOSTOW@SCORE, CSD.HINES@SCORE, CSD.NOVAK@SCORE, KEIRSEY@USC-ECL,
PRESSBURGER@SCI, SUE@SCI, SKLEIN@USC-ISIB, QUAYLE@SUMEX,
CSD.GARDNER@SCORE, BSMITH@BBNG, STAN@SRI-KL, SASTRY@ISIF, KANDT@USC-ECL,
RBECHTAL@BBNA, ATP.HINES@UTEXAS-20, RICK@RAND-AI, HENRY@RAND-AI,
GORLIN@RAND-AI, KLAHR@RAND-AI, WESCOURT@RAND-AI
Anyone else wishing to be on this mailing list need only send me a message
to be included.
Russell Greiner (RDG@SAIL, CSD.GREINER@SCORE)
∂03-Nov-80 1518 RDG RLL BB, Message#2
To: "@RLL.DIS[RDG,DBL]" at SU-AI
This message has several purposes:
1) The RLL Bulletin Board distribution list has been updated. It should be
RDG@SAIL, CSD.LENAT@SCORE, CSD.SMITH@SCORE, CSD.GENESERETH@SCORE,
CSD.MOSTOW@SCORE, CSD.HINES@SCORE, CSD.NOVAK@SCORE, KEIRSEY@USC-ECL,
PRESSBURGER@SCI, SUE@SCI, SKLEIN@USC-ISIB, QUAYLE@SUMEX,
CSD.GARDNER@SCORE, BSMITH@BBNG, STAN@SRI-KL, SASTRY@ISIF, KANDT@USC-ECL,
RBECHTAL@BBNA, ATP.HINES@UTEXAS-20, RICK@RAND-AI, HENRY@RAND-AI,
GORLIN@RAND-AI, KLAHR@RAND-AI, WESCOURT@RAND-AI
(The changes:
add on CSD.GARDNER@SCORE, STAN@SRI-KL, SASTRY@ISIF, KANDT@USC-ECL,
RBECHTAL@BBNA, ATP.HINES@UTEXAS-20, RICK@RAND-AI, HENRY@RAND-AI,
GORLIN@RAND-AI, KLAHR@RAND-AI, WESCOURT@RAND-AI
and change
BSMITH@PARC => BSMITH@BBNG
KEIRSAY@USC-ECL => KEIRSEY@USC-ECL)
The files RLL.DIS[rdg,dbl] and RLL.BBD[rdg,dbl] (both at SU-AI) will house
the distribution list and list of announcements made, respectively.
2) There was some confusion about the purpose and definition of this
Bulletin Board. It should be used for comments about representation
language languages in general; and NOT to discuss the details of specific
implementations, such as RLL-1 or MRS (except where that description is
relevant to elucidate some general idea). [Once these systems are
distributed (see (3) below), each will have a seperate board, which
describe bugs, fixes and updates to these respective systems.]
In terms of policy: we strongly encourage everyone to participate in the
dialogues -- please feel free to submit your ideas, and to voice
objections/comments/apprehensions in response to statements made by
others. The procedure will be to mail out your message to all members on
the list given above. I will see that all new members receive a copy as
well. If, later on, the list includes people not on the electronic
network, I will (at least at first) periodically mail out the
contributions, unaltered.
3) As several people have make inquiries about the status of RLL-1, I'll
now override statement (2) above to talk about this system, and
particularly the nature of our objectives.
While we do plan to release RLL-1 eventually, we are cautious about
releasing it too soon. Our reasons stem from various causes:
(i) The particulars of the starting RLL-1 system (i.e the "bootstrap") are
still being hammered out. The difficulties of this design are in two
camps: First we want the system to be as unbiased as possible. Given
that this starting system will necesarily employ some conventions we want
to insure each such convention is "minimal" and necessary -- that is, they
should not force you, the user, into difficult situations or awkward
coding. The neo-natal MRS is much closer to realizing this goal that
RLL-1 will ever be.
Secondly, RLL-1 should come equipped with enough powerful, general
constructs that the user can readily do a great many useful things, over a
wide range of tasks. Bifurcating again, many of RLL-1 current components
have not yet reached the generality we think possible, and furthermore,
there are many areas which have not even been considered, and so the
modules capable of performing this type of task have not yet been built.
This is not surprising: By design, RLL-1 is a continuously growing and
evolving system -- one capable of adding on new components as the need
arises. The concern here is the large number of known ommissions.
(ii) Another major problem is the bugs which are present in the current
RLL-1 system. We feel it will take about a month to correct the ones we
now know about.
(iii) The other major issue stems from research directions. Prof Lenat and
I developed RLL-1 as a tool, to be used to build the EURISKO system. [See
Appendix B.2 for an overview of RLL-1's role as foundation for this
system.] There were two major reasons why we encouraged others to use
RLL-1: First, these other applications will push on the set of features
RLL-1 will have to provide; the modules built to handle such situations
will expand RLL-1's capabilites, making it a more general tool for our
uses as well. Second, RLL-1 will provide a Lingua Franca for
EURISKO-related knowledge bases. To function, the EURISKO system must
first include a large collection of diverse knowledge bases. Rather than
inputing these ourselves, we would rather develope a symbiotic relation
with other researchers -- they will be given the underlying EURISKO
system, as a particular representational/control scheme for their data,
and in exchange, we get to peek over their shoulders, and collect their
set of heuristics. As such, it is strongly in our interest to continue
supporting EURISKO. We have further decided to support/improve RLL-1 only
where such modifications are crucial to its application to this primary
line of research -- which is concerned more with heuristics than with
representations, per se.
As the first message noted, the research ideas of a representation
language language are still being pursued here at Stanford, by Professor
Micheal Genesereth and David Smith, in developing the Modifiable
Representation System (MRS) mentioned above. They have guaranteed
continued support of its kernel, and intend to soon develop a full user
community, in which implementations of diverse representational systems
can be coopertively constructed, collected and dispersed. After the (both
conceptual and implementation) bugs have been purged from both of our
respective systems, RLL-1 will actually be encoded in MRS. At this point
RLL-1 will be (viewable as) one of many "plug-in" modules, which
"twiddles" that copy of MRS into a system which follows a particular set
of conventions.
I hope this message clarifies some of the questions you have had about
RLL-1. Please let me know if there are others.
Russ Greiner (RDG@SAIL)