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Date: Thu, 26 Jul 1990 21:37:36 PDT
From: Michael Genesereth <mrg@sunburn.stanford.edu>
To: interlingua@vaxa.isi.edu
Cc: gruber@sumex-aim.stanford.edu
Subject: news
Message-id: <CMM.0.88.649053456.mrg@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU>

Folks,

In preparation for our meeting at AAAI, I have just placed several
documents on Hudson.  These include (1) the July edition of the
standard, (2) a list of open questions (which we need to address
at the meeting), and (3) a note on quote for those of you who asked 
for some motivation about why we do things the way we do.  Peter 
Norvig has separately distributed a document with some worked
out examples.

The Roman text in the July edition of the standard is my cut at what
I think SHOULD be reasonably uncontroversial (modulo issues of spelling,
and so forth).   The text in italics describes substantive open issues.

There are a few changes from the last edition that are worthy of note.

(1)  Several sections have been merged to simplify the presentation.
For example, the sections metalinguistic knowledge, modals, 
definitions, and uncertainties have been combined into a single section 
called Knowledge about Knowledge.  

(2) There are new sections providing standard vocabulary for numbers
and lists.

(3) The entire document has been reformatted so that the vocabulary
being proposed is separated more clearly from examples.   Formal 
proposal material is enclosed in horizontal rules to separate it from
motivational material, examples, and explanations.

The open questions document presents a list of open issues in roughly 
decreasing order of importance.  Where the issue is localized to 
a section of the standard, the relevant text is reproduced.  In other
cases, where the impact is more diffuse, the issues are described without
reference to any material in the standard.  Some of the issues (e.g.
definitions) have been discussed extensively in the email.  I have not
tried to capture these discussions in the document, on the assumption that
the various authors can represent their own positions best.  However, I have
included a description of  ALMOST all of the issues that have been raised.

The documents can be retrieved by connecting to hudson.stanford.edu via
ftp, logging in as anonymous (any password will do), and then retrieving
the following files.  (Beware, the printed form of the interlingua document
is 56 pages long.)

   interlingua.tex
   questions.tex
   quote.tex

In looking at the files, please bear in mind that I have not yet had a chance
to polish any of the sections, and I have not had a chance to do virtually
anything with chapter 10 (on the representation of procedural knowledge),
though that material is very well worked out.  In other words, the
treatment is uneven.   I hope that there is sufficient content that we can
agree in principle and, if we manage to do that, I will then proceed to
produce Pulitzer prize winning text to enshrine our decisions.

I must say that I am very happy with the way things are turning out.  The 
feedback I have been getting suggests that this standardization effort is
a really important development for our field.  I hope that we can continue
to make progress and, in that hope, I look forward to our meeting next week.
See you in Boston.

mrg