Kim Marriott

The semantics of constraint logic programs

Abstract The Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) Scheme was introduced by Jaffar and Lassez. The scheme gave a formal framework, based on constraints, for the basic operational, logical and algebraic semantics of an extended class of logic programs. This paper presents for the first time the semantic foundations of CLP in a self-contained and complete package. The main contributions are threefold. First, we extend the original conference paper by presenting definitions and basic semantic constructs from first principles, giving new and complete proofs for the main lemmas. Importantly, we clarify which theorems depend on conditions such as solution compactness, satisfaction completeness and independence of constraints. Second, we generalize the original results to allow for incompleteness of the constraint solver. This is important since almost all CLP systems use an incomplete solver. Third, we give conditions on the (possibly incomplete) solver which ensure that the operational semantics is confluent, that is, has independence of literal scheduling.

Constraint multiset grammars

Constraint multiset grammars provide a general, high-level framework for the definition of visual languages. They are a new formalism based on multiset rewriting. We give a formal semantics for constraint multiset grammars, investigate the theoretical complexity of parsing with these grammars and give an incremental parsing algorithm.<<ETX>>

The Design of the Zinc Modelling Language

Zinc is a new modelling language developed as part of the G12 project. It has four important characteristics. First, Zinc allows specification of models using a natural mathematical-like notation. To do so it supports overloaded functions and predicates and automatic coercion and provides arithmetic, finite domain and set constraints. Second, while Zinc is a relatively simple and small language, it can be readily extended to different application areas by means of powerful language constructs such as user-defined predicates and functions and constrained types. Third, Zinc provides sophisticated type and instantiation checking which allows early detection of errors in models. Finally, perhaps the main novelty in Zinc is that it is designed to support a modelling methodology in which the same conceptual model can be automatically mapped into different design models, thus allowing modellers to easily “plug and play” with different solving techniques and so choose the most appropriate for that problem. We describe in detail the various language features of Zinc and the many trade-offs we faced in its design.

Visual language theory

1 Introduction.- 2 A Survey of Visual Language Specification and Recognition.- 3 Visual Language Theory: Towards a Human Computer Interaction Perspective.- 4 The CCMG Visual Language Hierarchy.- 5 Positional Grammars: A Formalism for LR-Like Parsing of Visual Languages.- 6 Relational Grammars: Theory and Practice in a Visual Language Interface for Process Modeling.- 7 Relation Grammars: A Formalism for Syntactic and Semantic Analysis of Visual Languages.- 8 How to Represent a Visual Specification.- 9 A Fully Formalized Theory for Describing Visual Notations.- 10 On the Isomorphism, or Lack of It, of Representations.- 11 A Syntax-Directed Approach to Picture Semantics.- 12 Input and Output for Specified Visual Languages.- 13 Specification of Visual Languages as Means for Interaction.

Solving linear arithmetic constraints for user interface applications

Linear equality and inequality constraints arise naturally in specifying many aspects of user interfaces, such as requiring that onewindowbe to the left of another, requiring that a pane occupy the leftmost 1/3 of a window, or preferring that an object be contained within a rectangle if possible. Current constraint solvers designed for UI applications cannot efficiently handle simultaneous linear equations and inequalities. This is amajor limitation. We describe incremental algorithms based on the dual simplex and active set methods that can solve such systems of constraints efficiently.

Precise and efficient groundness analysis for logic programs

We show how precise groundness information can be extracted from logic programs. The idea is to use abstract interpretation with Boolean functions as “approximations” to groundness dependencies between variables. This idea is not new, and different classes of Boolean functions have been used. We argue, however, that one class, the positive functions, is more suitable than others. Positive Boolean functions have a certain property which we (inspired by A. Langen) call “condensation.” This property allows for rapid computation of groundness information.

Explicit representation of terms defined by counter examples

Anti-unification guarantees the existence of a term which is an explicit representation of the most specific generalization of a collection of terms. This provides a formal basis for learning from examples. Here we address the dual problem of computing a generalization given a set of counter examples. Unlike learning from examples an explicit, finite representation for the generalization does not always exist. We show that the problem is decidable by providing an algorithm which, given an implicit representation will return a finite explicit representation or report that none exists. Applications of this result to the problem of negation as failure and to the representation of solutions to systems of equations and inequations are also mentioned.

Two classes of Boolean functions for dependency analysis

Many static analyses for declarative programming/database languages use Boolean functions to express dependencies among variables or argument positions. Examples include groundness analysis, arguably the most important analysis for logic programs, finiteness analysis and functional dependency analysis for databases. We identify two classes of Boolean functions that have been used: positive and definite functions, and we systematically investigate these classes and their efficient implementation for dependency analyses. On the theoretical side, we provide syntactic characterizations and study the expressiveness and algebraic properties of the classes. In particular, we show that both are closed under existential quantification. On the practical side, we investigate various representations for the classes based on reduced ordered binary decision diagrams (ROBDDs), disjunctive normal form, conjunctive normal form, Blake canonical form, dual Blake canonical form, and a form specific to definite functions. We compare the resulting implementations of groundness analyzers based on the representations for precision and efficiency.

Constraint cascading style sheets for the Web

Cascading Style Sheets have been introduced by the W3C as a mechanism for controlling the appearance of HTML documents. In this paper, we demonstrate how constraints provide a powerful unifying formalism for declaratively understanding and specifying style sheets for web documents. With constraints we can naturally and declaratively specify complex behavior such as inheritance of properties and cascading of conflicting style rules. We give a detailed description of a constraint-based style sheet model, CCSS, which is compatible with virtually all of the CSS 2.0 specification. It allows more flexible specification of layout, and also allows the designer to provide multiple layouts that better meet the desires of the user and environmental restrictions. We also describe a prototype extension of the Amaya browser that demonstrates the feasibility of CCSS.

Constraint-based document layout for the Web

Abstract. Constraints can be used to specify declaratively the desired layout of a Web document. We present a system architecture in which both the author and the viewer can impose page layout constraints, some required and some preferential. The final appearance of the Web page is thus the result of negotiation between author and viewer, where this negotiation is carried out by solving the set of required and preferential constraints imposed by both parties. We identify two plausible system architectures, based on different ways of dividing the work of constraint solving between Web server and Web client. We describe a prototype constraint-based Web authoring system and viewing tool that provides linear arithmetic constraints for specifying the layout of the document as well as finite-domain constraints for specifying font size relationships. Finally, we provide an empirical evaluation of the prototype.