feldman@thir.cs.cornell.edu (Ronen Feldman) (03/17/90)
I am looking for the address and phone number of the company which produces Arity Prolog for PC's. Does anyone know this information? Thanks Ronen feldman@cs.cornell.edu
lance@embassy.UUCP (Lance N. Antrim) (03/20/90)
From article <38776@cornell.UUCP>, by feldman@thir.cs.cornell.edu (Ronen Feldman): > I am looking for the address and phone number of the > company which produces Arity Prolog for PC's. > > Does anyone know this information? Arity Prolog is sold by the Arity Corporation in Concord, MA. Their toll-free number is 1-800-PCARITY. Arity also distributes Delphia's prolog's for the Macintosh and a range of other systems. I am just getting started on their Mac version so I can't say much about it, except that it really needs the expansion to 2.5 meg so that hypercard can run at the same time (Delphia lets prolog programs use the Mac interface through information passing to and from Hypercard). -- Lance Antrim Project on Multilateral Negotiation ..!uunet!embassy!lance American Academy of Diplomacy ___________________________________________________________________________
geertp@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl (Geert Postma) (03/20/90)
feldman@thir.cs.cornell.edu (Ronen Feldman) writes: >I am looking for the address and phone number of the >company which produces Arity Prolog for PC's. Arity Corporation 29 Domino Drive Concord, Massachusetts 01742 Phone: 508.371.1243 Geert Postma University of Nijmegen Fac. of Science Nijmegen, The Netherlands
mulford@sun.udel.edu (George Mulford) (05/03/90)
Here's a reply I made a bit ago...unable to reach by e-mail those who are now asking about Prologs for the IBM-PC. The only comparison we made was before we bought Arity several years ago; there had been a survey article in _Computer Language_ which made it clear that Arity was the heavy hitter among PC prologs. There are two rivals I'm aware of. Prolog-2 has added a compiler since we made our decision and Quintus recently bought, and supports, LPA Prolog. LPA's next cut will run on a 286 machine in protected mode under DOS, which Arity doesn't. Arity lets you use up to 2 Meg of expanded memory, and they have an OS/2 version, which we are using. Arity is a very full-featured Prolog, clearly made for the working world, not for cute demos. They have a lot of switches and knobs you can turn to optimize things, and although that's a tedious process, if you need to cram a big program into a tiny memory space, it helps. They have a "data world" (things entered via recordz) vs. "code world" structure and you can switch worlds under program control--so you can partition your database, on the one hand, and bring in program overlays on the other. In the data world, you can pass around pointers to the specific data records, and you can replace them destructively. They offer both an interpreter and a compiler; they have a virtual memory system which works. We have been VERY satisfied with support from Arity Corporation. Not only do they answer queries and send out free updates, but they maintain a PC bulletin board and answer questions on line, and they'll let you download intermediate versions. A very responsive company. Last of all, if you're in education, they are willing to talk about deep discounts and site licenses. If you are making a product to sell, there is no distribution fee, but if you took an educational discount, they want it back. Oh...as you'd expect from the above, they support i/o pretty well. They have primitive mouse handlers and window handlers you can plug in. The OS/2 version uses Presentation Manager for all of that. They have an extended set of file i/o predicates which make life easy on that side. They have strings, and the strings really do save memory as intended. They have binary-tree database tools and hash table support--lots of neat stuff. So the bottom line is: this is a PC Prolog that works, even on a production scale, but they have made it work by extending prolog for efficiency, and so sacrificing compatibility. You can write "pure" prolog in Arity, but for a large project, you'll need to take advantage of their non-standard features. -- George W. Mulford mulford@sun.udel.edu Instructional Technology University of Delaware
momma@is.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Stefan Momma) (05/04/90)
In article <10830@sun.udel.edu> mulford@sun.udel.edu (George Mulford) writes: > We have been VERY satisfied with support from Arity Corporation. Not > only do they answer queries and send out free updates, but they maintain > a PC bulletin board and answer questions on line, and they'll let you > download intermediate versions. A very responsive company. > > George W. Mulford mulford@sun.udel.edu > Instructional Technology University of Delaware is their online support accessible thru the Internet (i.e. is there a host ....arity.com that allows for anonymous ftp access or some such thing) ? -- Stefan Momma voicemail:+49-711-121-1431 (-3138) (secr.: -3125) Projekt Polygloss Internet: momma@informatik.uni-stuttgart.dbp.de IMS-CL/IfI-AIS Because-It's-There-NET: nbab1424@ds0rus54 University of Stuttgart ICBMnet : 48 46 36 N; 9 10 48 E; alt 245 m SnailNet/Sneakernet: Keplerstrasse 17 D-7000 Stuttgart 1; Fed. Rep. of Germany
johnt@seila.UUCP (john grant) (05/05/90)
Arity Corporation are, on the whole, pleasant to deal with and do listen to suggestions/bug reports, but their PC Prolog has a nasty limitation. The stacks and trail are limited to 64Kbytes each, this is also true of the OS/2 version - you can reduce the allocation (!) by using an "environment" file. The database is for all intents and purposes limitless, it will swap itself on & off disk very happily, as long as all predicates are less than 4Kbytes long, if they're larger it will bomb. It seems strange that they are quite happy to give you all this database space, but won't allow you to really use it by limiting the stacks. The OS/2 port is just that, a straight port of the DOS code, ie the same limitations exist, however the 'windows' and mouse support have been removed - it uses the VIO model for its I/O. There is no PM support, if you want PM you must write your own C/Pascal/Whatever and then tuck the Prolog into that. Having said that, I believe that they are the only OS/2 choice available. I have been using both the DOS & OS/2 versions for over a year, but during that time there has been little in the way of enhancements, so the field is open for other vendors - Quintus take note.
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe) (05/05/90)
In article <626@seila.UUCP>, johnt@seila.UUCP (john grant) writes
[that Arity/Prolog limits you to 64kbytes for each stack; he says
that this "seems strange"].
In fairness to Arity, that's a pretty common limitation.
LPA Prolog Professional, for example, has a command line switch /Enn
which controls stack size. The manual says "It is not possible to
increase evaluation space beyond 64kb, owing to limitations of the
8086 microprocessor family".
ALS Prolog Personal version 1.0 says "At initialisation time, the
system initialises the heap, local stack, and trail each to the same
size. ... Larger systems allocate each area 64k." The Professional
version of ALS Prolog also has automatic code swapping, so code size
is effectively unlimited.
The OS/2 operating system is based HEAVILY around the 80286 segmented
architecture. The 80286 and OS/2 actually make the segment juggling
that is needed to extend the stacks beyond 64k _more_ costly than
the 8086 and MS-DOS do, because of the checking of segment descriptors
and such. OS/2 is very definitely a 16-bit software architecture.
I can say that Quintus have looked very closely at OS/2 and continue
to keep an eye on it, but a 386 box with UNIX V.3 and VP/ix or Dos/Merge
is in the same general price range as an OS/2 system, and several vendors
(including Quintus) already have Prologs for the 386.bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards) (05/06/90)
In article <10830@sun.udel.edu> mulford@sun.udel.edu (George Mulford) writes: > >So the bottom line is: this is a PC Prolog that works, even on a >production scale I agree that Arity has a *lot* of nice features. However, I was terribly unimpressed to find that it only runs under DOS 4.0 if you use an undocumented switch on ANSI.SYS. This means, for folks who use DesqView and the like, that Arity *will not* run under DOS 4.0. Given that DOS 4.0 has been out for a couple of years, this doesn't give me a great impression of how up-to-date the product is. To be fair, though, aside from Turbo (pseudo)Prolog, none of the Prolog's I've evaluated support even simple things like the extended screen modes available on EGA and VGA cards. None of them are designed to be run under a multi-tasking system like DesqView or (gack) Windows. What gives? Does marketing a product to the academic market excuse companies from supporting system features that have been around less than 6 years? Bradley
ganeshan_k@darwin.ntu.edu.au (07/16/90)
I am looking for the telex and fax numbers for ARITY Corporation Any help in locating them greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Ganeshan C