A Lisp package defines a namespace. Within a single package, no two
symbols can have the same name. Since frame names are Lisp symbols,
no two frames can have the same name (in some frame systems, the same
name can be used for both a frame and a slot, but due to the potential
confusion that may arise, this practice is not recommended). Lisp has
a notion of the current package, such that by default, any
symbol you reference is assumed to be in that package. You can still
reference symbols in other packages, but you must preface the symbol
name with the package name and ::.
For example, suppose there are two packages PKG-X and
PKG-Y, and assume there is a symbol A
present in both packages. If my current package is PKG-X
and I refer to A, then I am referring to the symbol
A in PKG-X. To refer to the symbol A in
PKG-Y, I must write PKG-Y::A.
When a KB is created or opened, it is important to know which package
all its symbols should be in by default. When you first start up
Lisp, you will be in some default package, usually
CL-USER. When you open or select a
KB, that KB's package becomes the current package. This way, when you
are asked to enter a frame name, that frame name by default becomes a
symbol in the KB's package. (You can still reference symbols in other
packages, but you must use the :: notation) You may wish
to put each KB in its own package so that you can have multiple KBs
open at once without their frame names conflicting. When you type in
a package name while opening or creating a KB, and the package does
not yet exist, it will be created.
When no command is currently active, left clicking on a node will cause that frame to be selected. To indicate this, the node will be shown in reverse video. Shift-left clicking on a node adds it to or removes it from the selection, allowing you to select multiple frames for a single operation. Left-clicking on the background cancels all current selections. In addition, there are three commands accessible from the top-level Frame menu in the hierarchy and relationships viewers, Select All, Select Descendants, and Select Ancestors, that will select a whole group of frames. After a selection is made, an operation may be selected from the command menus. If the operation is one that can operate on multiple frames, the operation is performed on the entire selection. If the operation requires a single frame, and more than one frame has been selected, the user will be offered a menu of selected frames from which to choose. If, for example, the operation is applicable to class frames only, but the selection consists of a mixture of class and instance frames, only the class frames will be used. If a selected frame cannot be used, a warning message is printed in the text pane.
If no frame is selected when an operation that requires one is invoked, the user is prompted to enter a frame. If just one frame is required, the user will be prompted directly. A frame can be entered either by clicking on the corresponding node in the graph pane, or by typing in its name in the text pane. If you change your mind, and no longer want to perform the operation, typing Control-Z or right-clicking in the background will abort the command. If the operation can accept more than one frame, you may be asked to input a sequence of frames. You can do this either by left clicking on several frames in sequence, or entering a comma-separated list of frame names via keyboard. In some cases, additional selection options are available (such as All or None or Compute Automatically), in which case, a menu of options is popped up. You may choose to enter only a single frame, in which case the frame is entered as before. If you choose to enter multiple frames, you are put into a mode in which every node you left click on is added to or removed from the selection. You cannot type in frame names in this mode. Left clicking on the background ends the selection process. If the command can accept no frames (as in the case of creating a class with no parents), this is also provided as an option in the menu. The No Select option in the menu aborts the command.
When selecting an edge, if two nodes are preselected and there exists an edge between them, that edge is used. If one node is preselected, it is assumed to be the child node (unless it is a root, in which case it is assumed to be the parent). If there is only one incoming edge, that edge is selected automatically. If there is more than one incoming edge, the user is asked to click on the desired parent. If no nodes are preselected, the user is asked to select the child first, and then the parent if necessary.
Completion is available in most cases when typing in frame and slot
names: if you enter a partial name and then type Return,
a menu of completions will be
popped up.
Control-Meta-Y
yanks the last object from the kill ring. Meta-Y invoked
immediately after a Control-Meta-Y or another
Meta-Y rotates the kill ring. This facility attempts to
yank values in the form expected by the input context. For example,
if you are being prompted to enter a frame, the yanked value will be
coerced to a frame name where possible. If you are prompted to enter
a string, the value will be converted to a string, etc.
Due to limitations beyond our control, the kill ring cannot handle
multi-line strings, and also is not usable from within a Motif
text-editing window. Motif text-editing windows are used from within
the frame-editing viewer to edit multi-line values, which the kill
ring cannot handle, anyway, due to the first limitation. A variety
of emacs-like editing commands can be made available within Motif
text-editing windows by adding the appropriate entries to your
.Xdefaults file. (See the Installation Instructions for information
about setting up your .Xdefaults file)
Once you have created classes and slots, the degree to which you can modify them within the GKB Editor may be constrained by your FRS.
Creating slots is a bit tricky, so we discuss the issue in more
detail. Most FRSs store not only the values of slots within a given
frame, but they store meta information about each slot that describes
general properties of how the slot will be used in the KB. These slot
properties are often called facets; facets are in a sense ``slots on
slots'' because facets store a set of named values that are associated
with a slot. For example, a facet called :value-type
defines the types of values that a given slot can take, and a facet
called :domain defines those KB classes within which a
slot can appear. The facet names listed here may not actually be used
within your FRS, but because each FRS uses different facet names, the
GKB Editor internally translates from the names shown here to the
names used by your FRS.
All editing of slots is performed by invoking the Frame Editor on the class frame that will contain, or that already contains, the slot in question. For example, to add a slot called Age to the class Person, first invoke the Frame Editor on Person. Then click on Create from the Slot menu to add the Age slot to this class. Similarly, the Destroy operation will remove Age from Person, and the Rename operation will rename the slot.
More subtle modifications to a slot definition can be achieved by
changing its facets. Imagine that we wish to state that the Age slot
can only take one value, which must be an integer. To do so, we would
give the :cardinality-max facet the value 1, and we would
give the :value-type facet the value
:integer.
These facet values can be assigned in two ways. To establish default,
KB-wide values of the facets, use the Edit Slotunit operation
from the Slot menu. A slotunit is a special frame whose slots encode
KB-wide default values for slot facets. For example, if we edit the
slotunit for Age, and give its :value-type slot the value
:integer, we are effectively setting the
:value-type facet for the Age slot.
The other approach is to edit the facets of Age directly within a
class frame. Use this approach when either your FRS does not support
slotunits, or when you wish to specialize facet values. For example,
imagine our FRS also supported a facet called
:numeric-max, which defined the maximum value that a slot
value is allowed to have. In the Age slotunit, we could set the value
of :numeric-max to 150 -- a reasonable value for the
class Person. Imagine that we now define a new class, Infant, for
which the :numeric-max facet of Age should be further
constrained to have the value 1. To do so, first invoke the Frame
Editor on class Infant. Then use the Preferences menu to enable the
display of facets. If your FRS supports the :numeric-max
facet, you can then click on it and use the ReplaceValue
command to change it value in that class, without affecting the
:numeric-max of Age in Person.
gkb-editor:view-hierarchy (&key start-browse? roots
width height) [Function]
Invoke the hierarchy viewer. Since this is the main GKB-Editor startup
window, it also provides access to the other viewers from its
command menus. If start-browse? is non-nil,
and there exists a current open KB, then the GKB-Editor will
immediately begin browsing the class hierarchy. If roots
(a list of frame names) are supplied, then they will be used as the
roots of the hierarchy browse (assuming start-browse? is
non-nil); otherwise the roots will be computed using the
user's current preferences, as usual. If start-browse?
is nil and a previous hierarchy browse exists, it is
resumed; otherwise the viewer will appear showing the GKB-Editor
copyright graph. If both width and
height are supplied, then they will be used for the
dimensions of the viewer window; otherwise the dimensions will be
automatically calculated based on the user's screen size.
gkb-editor:view-relationshiops (&key roots (width 0) (height 0)
(slots *current-slots*) (breadth gsp::*browse-breadth-limit*)
(depth gsp::*browse-depth-limit*)
(hard-depth gsp::*browse-hard-depth-limit-p*)) [Function]
Invoke the frame relationships viewer. If roots (a list
of frames) is specified, the specified frames are used as roots of the
relationships browse. Otherwise, if a previous relationships browse
exists, then that browse is resumed. If no roots are specified and
there is no browse to resume, the user will be prompted to enter the
roots. If both width and height are
supplied, then they will be used for the dimensions of the viewer
window; otherwise the dimensions will be automatically calculated
based on the user's screen size.
gkb-editor:view-frame (&key frame slot (width 800) (height 500)) [Function]
Invoke the frame-editing viewer. If frame (a frame name) and
slot (a slot name) are both specified, then only the
specified slot and its values, facets, etc. will be displayed. If
frame is specified, but not slot, then the
entire frame will be displayed. This is what is normally seen when
you invoke the frame-editor from one of the other viewers. If
slot is specified, but not frame, and a
slotunit for the specified slot exists, the slotunit information will
appear in the display. If neither are specified, this function will
return immediately with no effect. width and height
are used for the dimensions of the viewer window.
gkb-editor:view-spreadsheet(frames (slots :single) &key
(dialog? t) (pretty-name? t) list-supers?
(frame-order? :alpha)) [Function]
Invoke the spreadsheet viewer. If dialog? is true then a dialog
is presented to the user before the spreadsheet is invoked. The dialog gathers
data for which slots to display and in which order, which order to display the
frames, whether to display pretty or frame names and their parents.
frames can be a list of instances or classes. slots
can be a list of slots or one of (:all :common :single).
pretty-name? is true, the pretty names of the frames are
displayed. Otherwise frame names are displayed. The parents of the instances
are displayed when list-supers? is true. frame-order?
is one of (:alpha :class).
dialog? is set to true, all arguments except
frames are ignored and the dialog is presented to the user. The
default for this call is that the dialog will appear. The frames will be
pretty names listed in alphabetical order, without their parents. The
spreadsheet will display single-valued slots.
In any viewer, you may use Control-v to scroll the
viewport downwards and Meta-v to scroll it upwards.
Return to the beginning of the GKB User Manual.