SNYDERS@process.com (John Snyders) (03/20/91)
A while ago I asked about Prolog for the ST. The following summarizes the replies I received: Toy Prolog: I received an English Doc for Toy Prolog. I can send this to anyone who is interested. Or perhaps someone can upload (or tell me how to) the doc to an archive as I can not store it here for long. - Thanks to Robin Gape. Some people have mentioned that Toy Prolog is not too good. But so far I have found it useable and it has GEM support. It is more useable than xprolog but a bit slow. Some people have clued me in to Prolog-68 by Jens Kilian the author of Toy Prolog. Jens writes: I recently posted a new Prolog system for the ST to comp.binaries.atari.st. It is called 'Prolog-68' and is somewhere in Volume 13 on the panarthea server. It is about 26 times faster than TOY Prolog (12 KLIPS, honestly !) and will be made as compatible as possible to the standard Prolog systems. There are two disadvantages of the new system: - It's not complete yet, and doesn't have TOY Prolog's GEM interface. - The documentation isn't complete either, and it's in German again :-( There is an English README file, but I simply don't feel like writing a book (that's what the documentation will become) in a foreign language. You don't need to ask about new versions or more complete docs [...] I'm far away from my ST at the moment ... I have not looked at Prolog-68 yet but I probably will. StonyBrook Prolog: Graham Higgins writes: I have a port of StonyBrook Prolog. It's serious (needs a few Mb of space to play in) but you're going to have to be careful about assert/retract 'cos it ain't got a garbage collector yet. Documentation is extensive. Has a byte compiler, too. SALIX prolog: Klamer Schutte writes: I prefered xprolog over toy prolog (10+ times faster). But don't call not-existing predicates! Now i use SALIX prolog. It is a commercial (approx. DM 200) package from germany. Its fast and reasonably bug resitant. The gem interface is nice (It is in prolog and no to slow). He did not send any company contact information. Lots of info from Singapore: If you are serious about using prolog you should get MPROLOG. M stands for modular as they have for Mac, IBM, VAX/DEC mainframe and the file is trans- portable across all plateform. I bought the Atari version for the School for postgraduate research 2 years ago. The price at the time thet I bought are: US$3000 or $5000 for VAX/DEC, US$1000 for IBM & MAC and US$800 for Atari. I can not remember the exact price but you may write to Logicware Inc, 5915 Airport Rd. Suit 200 Toronto, Canada L4V 1T1 for their current prices. The prog ram come with 2 Disks and 1000 pages (1-3/4" Thick A4 size) Manual. We have not use the program yet as I still could not find any Postgraduate candidate to take up my AI research project yet. Reading about this program in AI magazine make me decided on MPROLOG. For cheaper and less serious work you can also run Turbo Prolog (US$99) on Atari with IBM emulator. I have tried it with PC-Ditto (slow sofware version) it is toralabled. Now I have both PC-DITTO II and Super charger with 8087 co-pro but did not have chance to retry the Turbo Prolog again. I also have ExperProlog for Mac which may work with Atari/Spectre but again have not try out yet. University of Sydney using Arity Prolog with their IBM computers and Quintus Prolog with SUN Super Micro. Arity Prolog may also work with Atari/Supercharger/PC-Speed but I do not have access to Arity Prolog myself. Hope this helps, I have not yet contacted Logicware regarding MPROLOG. I will post a follow up with any new information I discover. Thanks to everyone who responded. - John Snyders