This directory contains files for the latest version of CODE. Updated with version 4.2 on 14 January 1995. Updated with new knowledge bases on 17 January 1995. Updated with latest manual and fixes in Aug 1995 WHAT IS CODE4? Code4 is a knowledge acquistion system. It has the following features that distinguish it from other such systems: - It is designed to be used by people who are not computer experts. To allow this, its knowledge representation can be used in a very simple way. More advanced users can use more advanced features. - It focusses on 'ontological' knowledge: Descriptions, rather than procedures. It is not a substitute for a database, but it can be used to help design a database schema. It can also be used for many other things such as creating highly detailed descriptive catalogues, designs of complex techical artifacts etc. - It has certain knowledge structures not found elsewhere (or at least substantially different from those found elsewhere), such as: - Metaconcepts - Term concepts - Statements and facets - It has certain user interface features not found elsewhere, e.g. - Interchangable types of browsers - Dynamically growable browser trees - Tables for editing and comparing knowledge (with interesting mechanisms to control what is displayed in the tables) WHERE DO I GET INFORMATION? The main WWW page is: http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/CODE4.html The directory where you will find downloads is: http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/code4/ There are a few other pages that people have created, but these other ones are not 'official' and they are not guaranteed to work. We used to keep a live demo on-line, but this consumed too many resources so we have turned it off. Sorry. The best paper about the system is: Skuce, D. and Lethbridge, T.C. (1995). "CODE4: A Unified System for Managing Conceptual Knowledge". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 42, 413-451. Bear in mind, however, that this paper does not discuss many of the interesting features of CODE4 in detail. My thesis, available from my home page, is the definitive place to look for information about CODE4. The above paper was partly extracted from the thesis. There are a few other papers. Look at my home page and follow the links! WHAT PLATFORMS WILL CODE4 RUN ON? The version we distribute will run on the original standard Sun4 architecture (Sparc 1, Sparc 2, Sparc 10, Sparc 20 etc.). It will not run on Sparc Ultra, Sparc 5 or Sparc Voyageur machines because these newer machines have an architectural change that causes problems. CODE4 will theoretically run on a PC, a Macintosh or an older Sun3. It certainly used to. Unfortunately however, you will need to obtain a special version of the VisualWorks 1.0 or Objectworks 4.1 virtual machine (the executable program that interprets our CODE4 software). Unfortunately, the company that made this (Parcplace-Digitalk) will no longer sell it. OBTAINING CODE4 Read this only if you have access to a standard Sparc or an appropriate version of the Smalltalk VM (see above). (Or if you want to download the manual) Go to http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/code4 You will find a file 'README' that explains the further details about how to get and run CODE4. The directory contains most things you will want including the manual, image, source code, example knowledge bases etc. We have included a version of the actual Sun4 executable called st80.41wc.sun4. There are also two versions of the system proper, v41 and v42. You should download v42 because this is more recent. CAN I GET THE SYSTEM VIA MAIL OR EMAIL OR ON DISK? No. Sorry. We do not have time to do that. We are university researchers and our job is to do research. We have found in the past that this kind of activity took too much time. WHAT IF I HAVE A PROBLEM? Please email me if you have any problems (after reading the manual). We would also be interested in hearing your reactions to the system. We do not, however, guarantee a response. If you report a bug, we will fix it only if we have the time. Note that there are several known bugs, and parts of the system that are incomplete. We have left these deficiencies because it appears they did not seem to have much impact on users. CONTENTS OF THE DISTRIBUTION DIRECTORY The directory 'v42' contains the latest v4 load build It also includes the latest manual. For contents of v42, read the separate README file there. Other directories and files kbases: a directory of knowledge bases kbsetc: a subset of knowledge bases st80.41wc.sun4: The Smalltalk virtual machine (as modified by us). This can run the image found in either 41C or 42 directories. THIS MUST ONLY BE COPIED BY THOSE WHO HAVE A PARCPLACE LICENSE FOR VISUALWORKS OR OBJECTWORKS If you don't have such a license, you will have to obtain one. Note that this version is only guaranteed to run in the Sun4 Sun/OS platform (there may be problems with Solaris). To run CODE4, start this executable with the name of the code4 image file (code4.im) as the argument. server.tar: C code to demonstrate access to the system via sockets. WHAT IF I HAVE A PROBLEM? Please email me if you have any problems (after reading the manual). We would also be interested in hearing your reactions to the system. We do not, however, guarantee a response. WHAT ARE FUTURE PLANS FOR CODE4? We occasionally still use CODE4 in our work, however we rarely make any changes to it. It serves fairly nicely as a simple tool to manipulate knowledge. The main reasons for not pursuing further work boil down to the following: * The smalltalk libraries changed a lot with successive versions of VisualWorks, and we were just not able to keep up. I can't ask grad students to do work that is not relevant to their theses. * I received significant grants to do different kinds of research. FUTURE DIRECTIONS I am involved with people who are developing a service and software that has some features of CODE4. This is called Fact Guru and can be reached at http://factguru.com The FactGuru systems intersect those of CODE4. CODE4 has a muchh more refined object model. On the other hand, Fact Guru has facilities for extracting facts from ordinary text. - Tim Lethbridge. tcl@site.uottawa.ca 613 562-5800 x6685