A menu-based interface for expert system rules

We describe the Syntax-driven Menu-based Interfaces for Lex and Yacc grammars (SMILY) system, which is a tool for generating menu-based interfaces for context-free grammars.
rule-based systems
tools
Published

April 12, 1988

Citation

James J. Tyhurst and Kerry L. Glover. 1988. “A menu-based interface for expert system rules”. In Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Expert Systems Conference and Exposition (April 12-14, 1988). Detroit: Engineering Society of Detroit. pp. 203-210.

References

PDF document: JimTyhurst-KerryGlover-1988-Menu-based-interface-for-expert-system-rules.pdf

Proceedings indexed in: OCLC WorldCat.

Abstract

The Syntax-driven Menu-based Interfaces for Lex and Yacc grammars (SMILY) system is a tool for generating menu-based interfaces for context-free grammars. We present the interface which has been developed for the HICLASSTM Software System as a sample output of the SMILY interface generator. This particular interface helps users to write an expert system rule by prompting them with menus that contain all and only the valid options at each point in the creation of the rule. Thus, users are constantly aware of the available options and they are guided in writing a syntactically correct rule. The SMILY system provides important functional improvements over previous menu-based systems for context-free natural language input. SMILY continues to provide menus through all stages of editing a rule and it can handle an arbitrary LALR(1) context-free grammar.