PrologConsole Plugin Documentation

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 tuProlog Shell embedded in the Console plugin

The plugin is embedded as a shell in the Console plugin, so you must have the Console plugin installed in order to be able to use the PrologConsole plugin. You can then access the PrologConsole plugin only by starting the Console plugin and choosing the tuProlog shell from the drop-down list at the top left corner of the Console plugin interface.

How to use the tuProlog shell

To solve a Prolog goal using the the tuProlog shell you have to type the goal in the textfield provided by the Console plugin interface and press the Enter key (or press the "Run" button). tuProlog can solve goals using all the ISO predicates (e.g. write/1, is/2) and any predicate provided by the user.

To control the tuProlog system, the following predicates can be used:

the consult predicate 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.
the listing predicate is used to display all the predicates composing the engine's current theory in the Console plugin output area.
the new predicate is used to clear the engine's theory and start with a new, blank theory.

When you are solving a goal with multiple solution, a "?" will appear after each solution, in order to ask the user if she wants to get another solution to the same goal. The user has two choices:

if she wants to ask the engine for another solution to the goal currently being solved, she just has to type ; in the Console plugin textfield and press the Enter key or the "Run" button.
if she wants to accept the current solution, she just has nothing to do.

Please note that a goal remains the engine's current goal until all of its solutions have been found, or the engine begin to solve another goal (this does not happens if the engine is asked to solve a goal with a syntax error in it).

Please refer to the Console plugin documentation if you want to know how to use the Console plugin interface and how the Console plugin works.

Requirements

The PrologConsole plug-in was developed under jEdit version 4.0final and embedded as a Console plugin shell, so the current requirements are: Console plugin version 3.2, and jEdit version 4.0final. 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 or Console plugin main developer, nor the tuProlog mantainer: please report to me bugs and suggestions related to the PrologConsole plugin only, and report the ones related to the text editor or the Console plugin or the Prolog system to their respective authors.

Change Log

Version 0.2: Rewritten to make the plugin a Console shell. Requires jEdit 4.0final, Console 3.2 and tuProlog 1.1.0.
Version 0.1: Initial release. Developed under jEdit 4.0final and tuProlog 1.1.0.