This file is http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/poplog.info.html
Note: "POPLOG" is a trade mark of the University of Sussex.
- Pop-11
(the core language of Poplog, derived from Pop2, the Edinburgh AI language developed in the 60s and 70s and extended at Sussex University in the 80s and 90s, including a rich interface to the X window system and a powerful Object Oriented programming extension, Objectclass, developed by Steve Leach now a standard part of the language (comparable to CLOS as an extension of LISP).)- Prolog
Standard prolog with the "Edinburgh" syntax.- Common Lisp
(Compatible with most of CLTL2 (Common Lisp the language, 2nd Edition) by G.L. Steele
For further information on compatibility, see http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/doc/lisphelp/bugs
or
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/doc/lisphelp/bugs- Standard ML
A powerful, strongly typed, polymorphic, functional language.
There is also a partial
implementation of Scheme in Poplog available at the
FreePoplog Site
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/freepoplog.html
This was developed by
Robin Popplestone, at
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
Alas Robin died in 2004. See
http://www.cs.umass.edu/csinfo/announce/robinpopplestone.html
http://www.cs.umass.edu/csinfo/announce/popplestone_endowment.html
http://www.cs.umass.edu/csinfo/announce/popplestonefellow2006.html
THE NEXT TWO NO LONGER WORK:http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/Popplestone/home.html
http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/remembrance.html
Poplog provides support for multi-paradigm software development in a rapid prototyping environment, because of the use of (fast) incremental compilers for all the languages.
In Poplog, all the above languages compile to a common virtual machine, which is then compiled (incrementally) to the current host machine language. Users can add new languages or extend the existing languages because the compiler development tools are made available (in the form of Pop-11 procedures, as explained in the Primer HTML or PDF version).
Poplog also includes a lot of X related facilities, an integrated multi-window programmable text editor (VED), and a host of teaching material and libraries provided in source. The system was developed mainly at Sussex University, but also at Integral Solutions Ltd (ISL) between 1988 and 1998. ISL was bought by SPSS (who sell the Clementine data-mining system originally developed in Poplog by ISL).
There are also various library extensions including
Poplog grew out of the Pop-11 language produced at Sussex University building on the many excellent ideas in the Pop2 language, originally developed by Robin Popplestone (see below) and others at Edinburgh University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
At Sussex Pop-11 was implemented (mainly by Steve Hardy) to run on a PDP11/40 computer running Unix, round about 1976. It was later ported to a VAX running VMS, and John Gibson was the main architect thereafter. Around 1981-2 Chris Mellish implemented a version of Prolog in Pop-11, and the combined system was then called Poplog. A few years later a "toy" Lisp system was added by Jonathan Cunningham, and after that a full Common Lisp was implemented by John Williams, with supporting changes to the Poplog virtual machine produced by John Gibson. Later Robert Duncan and Simon Nichols added an implementation of Standard ML.
One of the key features originally in Pop-11 and later in Poplog was support for e-learning. An overview of the philosophy and history of some of the features developed from 1976 at Sussex University can be found here. A central theme in all the computer-based learning techniques developed in Pop-11 and Poplog was always leaving the learner in total control.
Poplog was originally sold to commercial and academic users (at very different prices!) by Sussex University (starting around 1982), when it contained only Pop-11 and Prolog (hence the name.)
SDL (Systems Designers Ltd) took over marketing in 1983 (and had a Poplog stand at IJCAI83 in Karlsruhe). Later, following a merger, SDL grew into SD-Scicon, one of the largest software companies in the UK, which later changed its name to SD, and then became EDS
In 1989 SD decided to pull out of the AI tools market and a small group of people in the company (about 6) who had been associated with Poplog bought out the Poplog business (and also the SD-prolog business) and started ISL. At first their business was mainly selling and supporting Poplog (while Sussex University remained closely involved in development). They also provided AI services, developed various kinds of AI software.
During the 1990s ISL developed and diversified, including producing the prize winning Clementine Data Mining System, which was originally implemented mainly in Pop-11, making considerable use of Pop-11 (as did other systems produced by clients of ISL, e.g. COGSYS), and some products of Praxis.
In December 1998 SPSS bought ISL (a friendly takeover) and following that, discussions began with Sussex regarding the future of Poplog. This eventually led to the Free Poplog site.
There is a smaller out of date free version of Poplog (Version 15.01),
which apparently still works on SUSE Linux, though not on other recent
versions of Linux. It is available by ftp from Sussex University in the
Sussex Linux Poplog distribution directory:
ftp://ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk/pub/poplog/poplog15.0
This old version has some restrictions: it is memory-limited and you
cannot create saved images. But most of the teaching material in
older books on pop-11 can be used on it, though not the newer facilities
at the Birmingham Poplog ftp site.
Started 15 Feb 2007 here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/history/
Any contributions to that directory gratefully received.
Early development of the POP languageand
Now available here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/history/popplestone/pop_development.html
Functional and Interactive Computer Language Design
Now available here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/history/popplestone/functional.html
There is a Poplog/Pop-11 FAQ and a port of the Babylon AI development environment to Poplog Common Lisp.
Steve Leach
The news group is gatewayed to an email list currently maintained at the
University of Birmingham. If you wish to join the pop-forum email list,
write to A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
The directory contains code and documentation (mainly Pop-11) for use
with Poplog developed at Birmingham (some of it extending work done at
Sussex).
Detailed system documentation for Poplog, Pop-11 and the other Poplog
languages (Prolog, Common Lisp, and Standard ML) can be found in
the doc/ subdirectory.
Examples of displays produced by the
"RCLIB" (relative coordinates) Graphic Library can be
found in
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/figs/rclib/
The HTML version can be fetched in a tar file and unpacked for local
use:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/pophtmlprimer.tar.gz
It is available online (though without any of the diagrams alas) at
Last updated: 6 Jul 2009; 3 Dec 2010; 17 Dec 2019
Information at Reading University
Another source of information about Poplog can be found at
Reading University
The comp.lang.pop newsgroup
There was formerly an internet news group to which questions and comments about
Pop-11, Poplog and the Poplog languages could be posted: comp.lang.pop.
Information about what was in the news group is available at
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/comp.lang.pop.faq.html
The FreePoplog Directory at the University of Birmingham
can be examined at:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/
.
Poplog is no longer accessible by ftp.
Most of the contents of the directory are described below and in
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/freepoplog.html
There may be some additional historical information in the
README file.
Poplog/Pop-11 related code and documentation
The Birmingham local directories included in the FreePoplog directory
contain a lot of online teaching material for an introductory AI
programming course, a Ved-based net news reader, using the Pop-11 socket
library, extensions to the Pop-11 RC_GRAPHIC library, and two libraries
for design and development of "intelligent" agents. POPRULEBASE and
SIM_AGENT. For an overview and demonstration (with movies) of the
latter, see
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/cog_affect/sim_agent.html
An overview (plain text) file is here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/rclib/help/rclib
Fetching Birmingham utilities and teaching materials
Some of the Birmingham Pop-11 and AI teach files can be found in a
convenient compressed tar file in
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/bhamteach.tar.gz
The Pop-11 primer
There is a Primer of pop-11 for experienced programmers now available
in various formats in the
FreePoplog directory
including a version of the Primer in html.
(The graphical symbols won't work, but they are inessential.)
The Computers and Thought book available online
An effective introductory book for absolute beginners in AI and Cognitive
science is
Computers and Thought
by M.Sharples,
D. Hogg, C. Hutchison, S. Torrance, D. Young,
MIT Press (1989). This book relates AI to philosophy, psychology and linguistics,
and includes programming examples in Pop-11,
Natural language processing in Pop-11 available online
This book by Gerald Gazdar and Chris Mellish, originally published in 1989 by Addison Wesley,
is available online here:
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/local/books
OpenPoplog development project at Sourceforge
For further information see:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/openpoplog.html
This file (no longer maintained) was originally created and maintained by:
Aaron Sloman,
School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham
Email: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk