stry Bldg., as part of SIGLunch series. The talk is expected to last no more than 45 minutes. ABSTRACT: A key step in the design of user interface is the choice of a language for presenting facts to the user. The spectrum of possible choices ranges from general languages, such as predicate calculus, to more specialized languages, such as maps, diagrams, and ad hoc languages. General languages can express a broader range of facts than more specialized languages, but specialized languages are more parsimonious. The basic motivation for the research described in this talk is to construct a presentation system that can automatically choose an appropriate graphic language for presenting information to a user. This talk addresses two issues that must be considered when choosing a language to represent or present a set of facts. First, a language must be sufficiently expressive to state all the facts. Secondly, it may have the property that when some collections of facts are stated explicitly, additional facts are stated implicitly. Such a language should not be chosen if these additional facts are not correct. We first define when a fact is stated in a message. Using this definition, we define when a set of facts is expressible in a language. This definition can be used to determine whether a language should be chosen to represent or present a set of facts. We also consider the problem of choosing between languages that are sufficiently expressible for a set of facts. Two criteria are considered: the cost of constructing a message and the cost of interpreting a message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 12 Jul 84 07:45:12-PDT From: Dikran Karagueuzian Subject: Seminar - Machine Translation [Forwarded from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] For the Record MACHINE TRANSLATION AND SOFTWARE TOOLS On Tuesday, July 10 Mike Rosner of ISSCO Geneva and Rod Johnson of the University of Manchester gave a talk at SRI on their work on software environment for the Eurotra machine translation project, a coordinated international effort for the research and development of a multilingual machine translation system. ABSTRACT: A software environment which supports large-scale research in machine translation must provide the facility for rapid implementation and evaluation of a variety of experimental linguistic theories and/or notations, including novel ones developed specifically for the task. We have based our approach to the design of a suitable architecture upon the principle of executable specifications, an important aspect of which is an attempt to decouple the syntax of a given notation from the semantics. An appropriate choice of definition languages is essential for the success of such a venture, and in the talk we will present the current state of the work and discuss some of the open issues. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 12 Jul 84 07:45:12-PDT From: Dikran Karagueuzian Subject: Seminar - Statistical Computing Environments [Forwarded from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] Computing Environments Seminar FEATURES OF EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS Part 1 By John Alan McDonald (Stanford) at 11:00am Thursday, July 12, in Sequoia 114. ABSTRACT: Interactive data analysis can be usefully thought of as a particular kind of experimental programming. Our work should build on the 10-15 years of research in environments for experimental programming associated with places like Xerox PARC and the MIT AI Lab. In this session, we will discuss, in general terms, properties of experimental programming environments that are relevant to interactive data analysis. We will also describe and compare the two basic alternatives in programming environments that are open to us: o Conventional operating systems (eg. Unix). o Integrated programming environments (eg. Lisp Machine Environment). The conclusion will be that integrated programming environments are far superior to conventional operating systems for both the practice of data analysis and for research in data analysis. JULY-AUGUST SCHEDULE FOR COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS SEMINAR SERIES Tue., July 17: Flavors: Object-oriented Programming on the Symbolics Lisp Machine. (Richard Dukes, Symbolics) Thu., July 19: Features of Experimental Programming Environments, Part 2. (John McDonald, Stanford) Tue., July 24: Object-oriented Debugging Tools for S. (Alan Wilks, AT\&T Bell Labs) Thu., July 26: Data Analysis with Rule-based Languages and Expert Systems (Steve Peters, MIT) Tue., July 31: Current Research with S. (Rick Becker, AT&T Bell Labs) Thu., Aug. 2: Design Decisions in Object-oriented Programming. (John McDonald, Stanford) Tue., Aug. 7: Integrating Graphics into a Data Analysis Environment. (Mathis Thoma, Harvard) ------------------------------ Date: Thu 12 Jul 84 07:45:12-PDT From: Dikran Karagueuzian Subject: Seminar - Properties and Predication [Forwarded from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] P R O P E R T I E S A N D P R E D I C A T I O N By Gennaro Chierchia and Ray Turner, next Thursday's (July 19) CSLI Seminar will take place at 2 p.m. in the Ventura Conference Room. ABSTRACT: One of the most interesting recent developments in logic is perhaps the formulation of theories of properties where logically equivalent properties do not have to be identical a