HISTORY OF ISTAR


VERSION 1.041, November 1996

#  Found a bug had crept into Version 1.04 that prevented changing value 
types in Attributes Details panel.  So corrected it.

#  Also, internal changes to the way text of labels is displayed.

VERSION 1.04,  November 1996

#  Added the CONTROL Unary Operator.  See 'Using Istar'.  This allows 
attributes to be made 'not applicable' if another one is answered with 
False.  See new version of 'Using Istar' document.

#  Lots of work allowing you to set Preferences ...

#  Will now read IstarSys:IstarPrefs, if available, when starting up to set 
various preferences.  An IstarPrefs_LowMem is supplied.

#  Can now change fonts for the main easel, the user questions and the 
document.  (Note: document facility still not available.)

#  The Preferences panel now has KB and font information as well as Easel 
info, and it only sets the sizes for new KBs, not the existing one. 
(Scroll amount is set for all KBs and Easels, though.)  This makes it 
easier to prepare for a low memory situation.

#  Added facility to switch tracing on in the command line.

#  Changing the size of a currently displayed Easel is now done from a new 
'Easel' button on the KB Panel, not from the Preferences panel.

#  A wee change: Before, on hitting 'Quit' it would first ask "Do you want 
to quit?" and then ask for each KB "Do you want to get rid of it?"  Now it 
asks about all the KBs first, and then "Quit?"  This allows you to clear 
out all the KBs but not quit the program, so to start other KBs again.

#  A button on KB panel 'See Easel' will bring the easel of that KB to the 
front; useful when you have several KBs up.

#  Tidied up all panel handling.  Users shouldn't see any difference, but 
it makes a bit smaller.

#  New documentation file, KBs, which outlines all manipulation of whole 
knowledge bases, and IstarPrefs file.

#  Resizing of a KB is now possible, but occasionally fragile; see Bugs and 
Limitations.

#  When saving a KB you can now have automatic backups made of the file: 
see KBs document.  The old file is not overwritten, but has date and time 
appended to it.

#  Slight improvements to the Explanation of Relationship Instances.


VERSION 1.03,  September 1996

#  Made Istar more usable for drawing semantic networks.  Two main 
facilities:

#  Added facility to alter the visual appearance of item boxes, in a 
limited way.  Pen 1 gives the text colour for the label, Pen 2 and Pattern 
give the appearance of the box outline.  This meant new gadgets added to 
the Item Type Panel.

#  Added facility to define, for an item type box, which types of 
relationship will be drawn when user starts drawing from left or right 
edge.

#  Added KB Area panel, showing some details of the KB area, and allowing 
you to alter some.

#  Tidied up the mechanism for handling several KBs.  Removed one or two 
bugs that had crept in, such as referring to certain things in KB1 when KB2 
was active.

#  Added facility to record the Control Screen Parking position.

#  Hopefully more tolerant when it doesn't find the fonts it wants.

#  Cured one or two bugs encountered when linking items or moving links.

#  Tidied up Preferences (but still too few), and cured the problems that 
happened when setting them without a KB.

#  Removed the crash/inf loop when hitting the meaning-bar right hand 
gadgets when there is no KB.  (As I never told users about them, this 
should not have been a problem.)


VERSION 1.02,  July 1996

#  Placed on Aminet first as /misc/misc without install script, and then 
with proper install script and updated docs in /biz/misc.

#  Istar will now process more than one KB.

#  It meant replacing the separate Select Item Type, Select Relationship 
Type and Goal List panels with a single single KB panel.  Each knowledge 
base has its own KB panel.

#  It also meant some internal changes to the structure of the modules 
management, ES module operations, and other things, which are not described 
here.  (They are described in my Logs.)

#  I also put the backward and forward chaining on a sounder footing. 
Normally it worked OK but some funnies happened with overridden attributes.

#  When resetting an attribute for backward chaining, all its antecedents 
were reset OK, but the other consequents of those were not reset.  Now they 
are.

#  Implemented facility to define new relationship types.  This enables us 
to move towards a semantic net builder.

#  Added RANDOM unary operator.

#  Proper implementation of limits on ordinals and enums.


VERSION 1.01,  June 1996

This was the first version released.  It was a development of the KBTools 
software that came out of the INCA project, with a year spent on making its 
code more robust and generalized.  Istar works fairly well and robustly as 
an inference net builder.  But it can only process one KB at a time.

Copyright (c)  Andrew Basden, on all the dates shown.