Re: The Natural Rule Language
Eric and Jack,
That is indeed the problem:
EY> I skimmed the docs, and it seems to be very "templated"
> in that it requires the users to follow a very specific
> way of formulating the rules. Wouldn't that be almost
> as complex as having the end users learn to use a
> non-English (i.e. graphical) specification method?
That is also true:
JP> There is a lot of good stuff that can be done with
> a highly constrained interface.
Any kind of design and development involves mapping an
initially vague idea into a final, finished, precisely
specified and implemented product.
Any notation for logic (English-like, graphical, or whatever)
is always precise. It is impossible for any logical notation
to be vague -- but what it says so precisely may have no
relationship to what was intended. The discrepancies are
known as "bugs" (or as Microsoft calls them, "issues").
There is no magic. But there is room for improvement
in developing better tools to support the various stages
from a vague suggestion to a precise specification. That
is the theme of a talk I gave last month:
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/cmapping.pdf
John Sowa