Kara: A System for Visualising and Visual Editing of Interpretations for Answer-Set Programs

Abstract

Abstract. In answer-set programming (ASP), the solutions of a problem are encoded in dedicated models, called answer sets, of a logical theory. These answer sets are computed from the program that represents the theory by means of an ASP solver and returned to the user as sets of ground first-order literals. As this type of representation is often cumbersome for the user to interpret, tools like ASPVIZ and IDPDraw were developed that allow for visualising answer sets. The tool Kara, introduced in this paper, follows these approaches, using ASP itself as a language for defining visualisations of interpretations. Unlike existing tools that position graphic primitives according to static coordinates only, Kara allows for more high-level specifications, supporting graph structures, grids, and relative positioning of graphical elements. Moreover, generalising the functionality of previous tools, Kara provides modifiable visualisations such that interpretations can be manipulated by graphically editing their visualisations. This is realised by resorting to abductive reasoning techniques. Kara is part of SeaLion, a forthcoming integrated development environment (IDE) for ASP.

SeaLion: An eclipse-based IDE for answer-set programming with advanced debugging support

“…Besides the representation in a UML object diagram as presented in the previous section, answer sets can also be visualised without the need of creating a domain model by using the Kara plugin (Kloimüllner et al 2011). In the context menu of an interpretation in the interpretation view, one can initiate either a customised visualisation or a generic visualisation.…”

“…Second, modifying the visualisation can be used to obtain a modified version of the visualised interpretation by abductive reasoning. In fact, we implemented a feature that allows for abducing an interpretation that would result in the modified visualisation (Kloimüllner et al 2011). Customised visualisations created with Kara are given in Figures 2 and B11.…”

“…Visualisation of answer sets is provided by the Kara plugin of SeaLion (Kloimüllner et al 2011) that can create user-defined graphical representations of interpretations. Morevover, Kara offers generic visualisations and allows for graphically manipulating interpretations.…”

Giving hints for logic programming examples without revealing solutions

“…We here consider teaching ASP by giving small real-world knowledge representation examples and partial programs to students, and ask them to complete the program. To supporting the student, examples can often be visualized and it is even possible to connect visualization and knowledge representation such that clicking the visualization can show the parts of the program that define the visualized object [KOPT13]. Creating such visualization is a work-intensive task, and creating simple examples for teaching ASP is also work-intensive.…”

Debugging Answer-Set Programs with Ouroboros – Extending the SeaLion Plugin

“…While, on the one hand, Ouroboros provides additional debugging functionality for SeaLion, on the other hand, it also profits from the Stepping-plugin which can help in building up the interpretation that is input to our approach. Another possibility to create an interpretation is to use the Kara plugin of SeaLion [15].…”