An Information Presentation System

Abstract

AIPS is a system for graphically presenting information. It promotes a high degree of interactivity between a user and a knowledge base or knowlege-based system, and is designed to be utmost domain independent and extensible. This paper describes the concept of an Information Presentation System (IPS), the intimate relationship between IPS goals and knowledge representation issues, and some of the architecture of AIPS. I Information Presentation Interactive graphics is an indispensible technique for putting people in touch with a large knowledge base or knowledge-based system. Graphic output is the best way to communicate a substantial amount of information to a human user because it exploits the high-bandwidth human visual channel. Graphic input (i.e. user input which points at or otherwise indicates components of a graphic display) is an extremely economical way to describe something; it is much easier to designate an existing depiction than to generate some other descriptor. The descriptional economy of graphic input promotes a feeling of immediacy; the user has the sense of interacting directly with information rather than dealinq with an intermediary. For these reasons, interactive graphics can play an important role in larqe knowledge-based systems, whether at the interface to the end user or at the interface to the implementor or maintainer. That role is not diminished by progress in natural