Here's my 2 cents on visual rule programming. Building a visual programming tool for rules is feasible, but it depends on the scope. Take lego mindstorm for example. It uses icons to denote an action or sensor, when the program is load on the mindstorm control, it's converted to executable code.
the trick to building one for home automation/security would be to define the common actions and map them to an icon with the required parameters. For example, you might have one for turning on the outside lights and another for turning them off. If the scope is sufficiently narrow and well defined, it "should" be straight forward. What isn't desirable in my mind is creating a general purpose visual programming tool for writing arbitrary rules. My bias opinion is it's much better to write it in clips syntax directly. Another option is to have natural language rule authoring, instead of visual rule authoring. Again, the key is keeping the scope narrow and well defined. peter On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 9:07 AM, Wolfgang Laun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Looking at the Jess Manual's Reference section, you can see the > distinctions between (a) Jess Constructs and (b) Jess functions. > > (a) I can imagine that designing templates and left hand sides (for > rules and queries) graphically could be nice to have. Graphics for > templates would be very similar to what you have in UML for classes. > But, as for the rules, ask yourself: Is there a way that a complex > logical condition plus the bindings and the references to the bindings > can be created, displayed and modified graphically more easily than > textually? We're at the expression level of programming, and most visual > systems just let you fill in a text box for those. > > (b) Programming in Jess is very much like programming in Lisp. If there > are visual programming tools for Lisp, and if they are considered > "valuable", then you have the answer for Jess. I'd say that the control > structures can be represented by something like Nassi-Shneiderman > diagrams, but the rest, again, is "expression level". > > But I expect that others might violently disagree with me, especially as > I'm known to be rather reluctant to follow the Design-by-Diagram > acolytes ;-) > > Regards > Wolfgang > > ivo jonker wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> >> For my trainee-graduation-project i implemented Jess as a reasoner in >> a home-security/automation system. Now, part of the final phase of my >> assignment is to define a few new graduation-assignments for a >> follow-up trainee project. >> >> Now, i was wondering. Is there anything such as a visual programming >> tool to programm Jess-code? If not, would it be valuable to the Jess >> community to have such a tool/plugin? >> >> Kind regards, >> Ivo Jonker >> >> > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' > in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list > (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
