154,295 research outputs found
Generating natural language specifications from UML class diagrams
Early phases of software development are known to be problematic, difficult to manage and errors occurring during these phases are expensive to correct. Many systems have been developed to aid the transition from informal Natural Language requirements to semistructured or formal specifications. Furthermore, consistency checking is seen by many software engineers as the solution to reduce the number of errors occurring during the software development life cycle and allow early verification and validation of software systems. However, this is confined to the models developed during analysis and design and fails to include the early Natural Language requirements. This excludes proper user involvement and creates a gap between the original requirements and the updated and modified models and implementations of the system. To improve this process, we propose a system that generates Natural Language specifications from UML class diagrams. We first investigate the variation of the input language used in naming the components of a class diagram based on the study of a large number of examples from the literature and then develop rules for removing ambiguities in the subset of Natural Language used within UML. We use WordNet,a linguistic ontology, to disambiguate the lexical structures of the UML string names and generate semantically sound sentences. Our system is developed in Java and is tested on an independent though academic case study
Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation
This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language
Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from
non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the
field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new
(usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology.
This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on
the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are
organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that
have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas
of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG
evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural
Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the
relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118
pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
Designing as Construction of Representations: A Dynamic Viewpoint in Cognitive Design Research
This article presents a cognitively oriented viewpoint on design. It focuses
on cognitive, dynamic aspects of real design, i.e., the actual cognitive
activity implemented by designers during their work on professional design
projects. Rather than conceiving de-signing as problem solving - Simon's
symbolic information processing (SIP) approach - or as a reflective practice or
some other form of situated activity - the situativity (SIT) approach - we
consider that, from a cognitive viewpoint, designing is most appropriately
characterised as a construction of representations. After a critical discussion
of the SIP and SIT approaches to design, we present our view-point. This
presentation concerns the evolving nature of representations regarding levels
of abstraction and degrees of precision, the function of external
representations, and specific qualities of representation in collective design.
Designing is described at three levels: the organisation of the activity, its
strategies, and its design-representation construction activities (different
ways to generate, trans-form, and evaluate representations). Even if we adopt a
"generic design" stance, we claim that design can take different forms
depending on the nature of the artefact, and we propose some candidates for
dimensions that allow a distinction to be made between these forms of design.
We discuss the potential specificity of HCI design, and the lack of cognitive
design research occupied with the quality of design. We close our discussion of
representational structures and activities by an outline of some directions
regarding their functional linkages
Natural Language Dialogue Service for Appointment Scheduling Agents
Appointment scheduling is a problem faced daily by many individuals and
organizations. Cooperating agent systems have been developed to partially
automate this task. In order to extend the circle of participants as far as
possible we advocate the use of natural language transmitted by e-mail. We
describe COSMA, a fully implemented German language server for existing
appointment scheduling agent systems. COSMA can cope with multiple dialogues in
parallel, and accounts for differences in dialogue behaviour between human and
machine agents. NL coverage of the sublanguage is achieved through both
corpus-based grammar development and the use of message extraction techniques.Comment: 8 or 9 pages, LaTeX; uses aclap.sty, epsf.te
Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis
Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe
Mixing representation levels: The hybrid approach to automatic text generation
Natural language generation systems (NLG) map non-linguistic representations
into strings of words through a number of steps using intermediate
representations of various levels of abstraction. Template based systems, by
contrast, tend to use only one representation level, i.e. fixed strings, which
are combined, possibly in a sophisticated way, to generate the final text.
In some circumstances, it may be profitable to combine NLG and template based
techniques. The issue of combining generation techniques can be seen in more
abstract terms as the issue of mixing levels of representation of different
degrees of linguistic abstraction. This paper aims at defining a reference
architecture for systems using mixed representations. We argue that mixed
representations can be used without abandoning a linguistically grounded
approach to language generation.Comment: 6 page
User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience
A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further
step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses
how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the
developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time
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