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ABSTRACT

The goal of this research is to develop ways of representing the knowledge available to a help system in such a way that the system can actually reason with the knowledge rather than being restricted to simply retrieving and presenting stored answers to a restricted and anticipated class of questions. One kind of information that is useful to such an intelligent help system is knowledge of how the underlying system operates. This knowledge is contained in the code for the system. By exploiting system code as part of the help database, many problems of inconsistency between programs and their documentation can be avoided. In our initial investigations of this problem, we are representing the system code as a set of productions that are easier to manipulate than is code in most standard languages. As we develop techniques for answering questions by reasoning with knowledge about the system, we become increasingly able to answer the growing variety of questions that will occur as the language interface to a help system becomes more flexible.

REFERENCES

• 1: Grice, H. P. "Logic and Conversation." In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (eds.), Studies in Syntax, Volume III. New York: Seminar Press, 1975.
• 2: Brian Keith Reid, Scribe: a document specification language and its compiler, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1981