PrologConsole Plugin Help

PrologConsole is a jEdit plug-in embedding a Prolog engine in the jEdit text editor. The chosen Prolog engine is tuProlog, a Java-based very light-weight Prolog system developed at the University of Bologna and Cesena. If you are reading this and want to download and install the plug-in, I assume that you are familiar with Prolog programming: so, I'm going to just explain how the plug-in and its interface work accomplishing the integration between jEdit and tuProlog.

The plug-in's interface is divided in three parts: a toolbar at the top, a textarea in the center, and a textfield at the bottom. The textfield is used to enter goals the user want the Prolog engine to resolve. The textarea is used to display the engine's output, in the form of a solution, an error message, or just a service message (like "Ready" when the engine is ready to accept new input).

The toolbar contains seven buttons. From left to right:

• Clear output area is used to clear the textarea when it is too crowded or the user wants a new, clean sheet of paper where to display the Prolog engine's output.
• Import theory from current buffer is used to import all the predicates in the current jEdit buffer into the tuProlog engine's theory. tuProlog mantains internally all the standard ISO predicates (e.g. write/1, is/2) and other facilities like predicates for list manipulation (e.g. append/3, member/2), plus a theory containing all the user defined predicates feeded into it. This theory can be augmented with new predicates, or reset to a blank new theory at user's will.
• Export current theory in a new buffer is used to display all the predicates composing the engine's current theory in a new jEdit buffer.
• Trash current theory is used to clear the engine's theory and start with a new, blank theory.
• Solve goal is used to feed the engine with the goal contained in the textfield at the bottom of the user interface, asking for the engine to solve it.
• Get next solution is used to ask the engine for another solution to the goal currently being solved in the case that goal has open choice points. The button gets enabled or disabled in the case there are or there are not multiple solutions.
• Accept current solution is used to accept the current solution when a multiple solutions goal is being solved. The button gets enabled or disabled following the same guidelines as the previous button.

Currently the plug-in has no option to set up, and can be invoked by simply opening the Plugins menu in jEdit's menubar and click on the "tuProlog Console" entry.

Requirements

The PrologConsole plug-in was developed under jEdit version 4.0final, so I suppose it is at least required to let the plug-in work. The tuProlog engine (currenlty in version 1.1.0) is also required, but a copy is a provided within the PrologConsole zip archive.

jEdit can be found at http://www.jedit.org

tuProlog can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuprolog and at http://lia.deis.unibo.it/Research/2P.

Contacts

The plugin's author is Giulio Piancastelli, and can be contacted writing to gpian@softhome.net. Please note that I am not the jEdit main developer, nor the tuProlog mantainer: please report to me bugs and suggestions related to the plugin only, and report the ones related to the text editor or the Prolog system to their respective authors.

Change Log

Version 0.1

Initial release. Developed under jEdit 4.0final and tuProlog 1.1.0.