William Stallings

BRIDGE: An Interactive Dialogue-Generation Facility

An interactive programming system for the generation of man-computer dialogues is introduced. The system consists of an integrated set of tools that are used to define and generate the software for a variety of dialogues. The system is capable of generating dialogues for computer-assisted instruction (CAI), data processing, and the programming of special-purpose applications.

A minisystem programming language

TRAIL is a block-structured language and programming system for the development of programming support systems and translators for problem-oriented languages on minicomputers. The programming system includes an interpreter for an intermediate language (IL) into which various source languages (including TRAIL itself) may be translated. The interpreter size is about 1400 bytes. The choice of an interpreted target language was guided by the objectives of minimum object code size and machine independence of the developed software. Both of these have been achieved, at the expense of a 20:1 slowdown of execution speed relative to directly assembled code. The interpreted object code is at least 50% smaller than assembly code. The source language was designed to match the requirements of language translator software; software design directly models syntax checking, context-free translation, and context-sensitive translation aspects, in ascending order of complexity. Anticipated benefits include greater productivity in design and debug phases, and enhanced communication between programmers via simplified documentation procedures.

Computer description and recognition of printed Chinese characters

An increasingly important aspect of computer pattern recognition research is automatic pattern description. Investigators have emphasized that pattern analysis should be basic to any pattern recognition scheme. Pattern analysis may be defined as the identification of elements of a structure and the description of the relationship among those elements. Chinese characters, by virtue of their regular structure, seem well suited for pattern recognition based upon pattern analysis.