1 comments about Natural Language Processing in Prolog: An Introduction to Computational Linguistics.

1. Although it is the opinion of this reviewer that if you are doing NLP you should be doing prolog, this isn't the best book for the task. Look instead to "Prolog and Natural-Language Analysis" by Pereira & Shieber, or "Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers" by Michael A. Covington.
   
   When Patrick Blackburn & Johan Bos's new book comes out, it will be the one to buy.

1 comments about Knowledge Systems and Prolog: Developing Expert, Database and Natural Language Systems.

1. The Sowa work is important for anyone who designs a knowledge based system with a fairly complex rule structure. The mechanics of programming design of a knowledge system involve metalevel programming. The systems designer writes rules and rules on how to use the
   rules. A rule has a head, a body (goal). A goal is either a
   single or conjunction. A single goal always succeeds. A
   conjunctive goal succeeds if both parts succeed. A single goal
   succeeds if there is a rule whose head matches the goal and whose
   body succeeds.

   The programming mechanics of artificial intelligence must be
   presented in an easy-to-follow format; otherwise the technical
   programming theory and implementation will be more difficult
   for a novice to grasp. This work is perfect as a supplemental
   text in an introductory or intermediate-level course in
   artificial intelligence in a computer science or engineering
   program. A strength of the work is that the author provides a good explanation of the basic theory of AI programming
   with accompanying examples depicting implementation.

   The work is a solid value for the price charged. This presentation would be very helpful in a formal research project
   of Artificial Intelligence.

No comments about The Practice of Prolog (Logic Programming).

No comments about Prolog Programming for Students: With Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence Topics.

5 comments about Prolog Programming in Depth.

1. This book has been an excellent material for me to develop my Logic Programming skills. That is because it provides not only theory of Prolog programming but also very useful artificial intelligence applications and expert system shells even with uncertainty. Another useful feature I liked much is; the book makes comparisons (where needed) between how to do the same thing in Prolog and in a conventional programming language, Pascal.



2. Lots of practical tips early in the book, particularly on I/O, get the reader off to a fast start in Prolog. This reviewer felt lost in Prolog until he read this text. The breadth of examples is impressive.

   The only flaw on this book is the author's tendency to fight some ideological battles that the reader does not care about. Their tone is unnecessarily hostile, particularly in the introduction to Chapter 4. But that's only one paragraph in an otherwise wonderful book.

   It is a great book for getting started, and getting a feel for Prolog, but it is no substitute for a thorough text that includes some theory.

   Theory is not a bad word. A working understanding of how the logic interpreter works is important for debugging.

   In my opinion, Chapter 3 is denser than it appears, and should be studied carefully. cf. the discussion of append. This reviewer has done the exercises using SWI prolog with only minor adaptations.

   All told, a solid introduction. A good book to read before (but not instead of) a more theoretical introduction such as The Art of Prolog.

   Even though freeware prologs exist on the internet, the appeal of this "practical" book would be greatly increased if the authors arranged to have a CD of some freeware prologs included with the text.




3. The book is well organized with fluent exposition especially, in comparing the traditional and logic programming. The efford spend to create a bridge between these programming paradigmas is interesting and remarkable. It contains the examples that were prepared intelligently about how to think writing a program and AI examples. It also contains some hints about elegant programming techniques in prolog and for those who want to write a prolog interpreter. Moreover, how a programmer makes mistakes in programming were determined. In this mean, it has a spectrum from novice to expert. Reader can find differencies between different prolog implementation and prolog standards and can find good explanation about some special topics such as cut operator, recursive definition, file usage, reading data in foreign formats, tree structures and operator definitions special to user.

   It would have been better to write a whole chapter which includes how to write a prolog interpreter. There is no knowledge about prolog can interact with what languages and how it is done this. For example, how we can use C in prolog and vice versa.

   Mehmet Fatih Hocaoglu




4. One of the most underrated schools of thought in AI and NLP is the the school which was lead by Michael Covington and Donald Nute at University of Georgia. It is the opinion of this reviewer that this school produced, in its papers, thesis of grad students, and books, the most impressive results in discourse representation theory produced in the western hemisphere, and are comparable with those produced anywhere else in the world.
   
   This book--a product of that school--is such an unexpected little gem of a prolog book. I wish I would have stumbled across it much earlier in my quest for prolog mastery, because it would have saved me at least 18 months of struggling to learn prolog tools and techniques--techniques which were not only scattered among dozens of books, but were not nearly as clearly described.
   
   One area which this book covers which virtually no other prolog book covers is nondefault reasoning. Really a remarkable discussion. Unfortunately, I think that the techniques of nondefault reasoning which are covered in this book have been superceeded by newer techniques, such as probabilistic horn abduction and Baysian methods. But just because these techniques are of historical interest doesn't mean they are of no interest, and the treatment they get here is clear, honest, and more complete than anywhere else I've looked.



5. I have been in the field of software development and architecture for quite a while now. While I value the rigor and comprehensive nature of academic texts on specific topics in this field, I frequently find them to be overly abstract to easily apply to a particular problem domain. This text provides an excellent, pragmatic, and easy to apply introduction to both the Prolog semantic model and language structure, as well as its differences from traditional procedural or assignment-based programming languages and metaphors. I also have "The Art of Prolog" and several other books on the topic, but this is the book that I find myself repeatedly using as a reference on how to most clearly and easily represent and solve a particular problem using this extremely flexible and expressive language. Kudos to the authors for an excellent presentation on the subject!

1 comments about Logic Programming with Prolog.

1. Prolog is one of these languages that has struggled for decades to achieve wide usage. As Bramer explains, it is a logic language, as opposed to procedural languages like C, Java or C#. In its space, it competes mostly with Lisp, which also has failed to garner broad acceptance.
   
   Anyhow, Bramer's book is a little different from most other texts on Prolog. No prior programming expertise in any language is needed. Alternative books often assume an already sophisticated background in computer science.
   
   Certainly, if you have programmed in something like Fortran or C, you'll find the mindset and syntax here to be very different. Which may well be one advantage to learning Prolog, even if you plan not to take it very far. It exposes you to a different mode of programming logic. That might even help you in your "regular" coding.
   
   Now if you have coded in SQL, then there are conceptual similarities with Prolog. Both are declarative languages, and SQL is essentially an instantiation of set theory. Turns out in Prolog, much of it also amounts to set manipulation.

4 comments about The Craft of Prolog (Logic Programming).

1. The contents are too confusing and it is definately not for the beginner/intermediate level who want to learn and understand more about prolog.



2. This book, although not an introductory text, is widely considered the indespensable classic in writing good Prolog code. Try searching for it in the newsgroup comp.lang.prolog some time on DejaNews.

   Prolog does a wonderful job of hiding what is really going on. This book reveals the wonderous truth.




3. The spirit of this book is exemplified by this quote: "If your Prolog code is ugly, the chances are that you either don't understand your problem or you don't understand your programming language, and in neither case does your code stand much chance of being efficient."
   
   This book is O'Keefe's attempt to wipe out both root and branch of bad prolog code. A close reading of this book will not only give you a deep understanding of prolog and logic programming, but it will put you into mental contact with O'Keefe's profound insights into the kind of thinking necessary for being a topflight progammer.
   
   I should mention that this book is not just for prolog programmers. It contains mindbending observations on programming available absolutly nowhere else. Unfortunately, like the scholar of the middle ages who had to master Latin and greek, you'll have to learn prolog before this book will yield up its treasures.
   
   As O'Keefe unambiguously states in the opening paragraphs, this book should NOT be your first, or even your second, book on Prolog. There's no royal road to knowledge; you'll have to pay your dues. But after you've achieved a good foundation, this is the way forwared to enlightenment.



4. I read this book in the library of my University. This book is *not* for beginners. Definitely. But in my opinion this is a *good* thing. This is a 5 star book: those who are not able to understand it, should study a bit more rather than lamenting about the book being too difficult.

No comments about Computing With Logic: Logic Programming With Prolog.

1 comments about Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers.

1. This book, while a bit dated, is still the best discussion of a wide variety of (nonstatistical) parsing methods in print. The best part of this book is the table on p. 191, where the author compares the runtimes of the various parsing algorithms, and shows that the one with the scariest "big O" complexity is actually the fastest in practice. This is a very important lesson to impart to budding computer scientists: use "big O" analysis wisely, not as the voice of God, as to which algorithm is the best practical algorithm.
   
   I've given this book 4 stars instead of 5 stars because it is a little out of date: look elsewhere for the best discussions of quantifier scope handling and discourse. Also, it doesn't contain any discussions on the what is today the more fashionable statistical-based approaches, but the jury is still out, IMHO, on whether this is a drawback or not.

2 comments about Natural Language Computing: An English Generative Grammar in Prolog.

1. Written by a student of Noam Chomsky, this book introduces the classic approach to natural language processing using Prolog. Prolog is a programming language used for writing programs that model human logic and decision making. It is particalarly well suited for natural language processing. The book assumes very limited computer programming knowledge, and should be especially useful to linguists who want to introduce themselves to natural language computing.
   
   The book begins with an indepth discussion of the old and the new theory of the computer intelligence and artificial intelligence machines. Then it goes on to discusses topics such as, different levels of human language structure, morphological parsers, recursion (affixes on the affixes), regular and irregular morphology, rule governed creativity, top down and bottom up parsing. Practically every linguistic phenomenon discussed is accompanied with an example Prolog program.
   
   This book is a must-have for any student of linguistics wishing to learn how to use the AI features of Prolog to do natural language computing.



2. It's a great book and easy to read. I am learning alot from it.