Claims and Wishes

Realtalk is an extension of Lua that adds a natural-language-like version of Datalog to it. Rules are defined with "when", and facts are stated as claims and wishes. Programs in Dynamicland are attached to physical objects which can communicate through Realtalk. It has a centralized Datastore of all Facts and Wishes that all programs can access. This example from Rizwan (2018) describes a physical object which adds the Label "it’s a bird" when it is pointed at another object that claims to be an airplane.

When /a/ is a "airplane", /a/ points "down" at /p/: Wish (p) is labelled "it's a bird!" End

From Realtalk Garlang borrows the idea of formalizing natural language by mapping sentences to Datalog predicates. While Garlang’s ultimate goal is to be as natural as possible, Realtalk is more pragmatic. It allows users to mix Realtalk rules and claims with ordinary Lua code. This makes Realtalk more powerful, which allows it to be bootstrapped, but in return, it requires users to learn at least some Lua. Instead, Garlang pushes conventional program code to the boundaries of the system by encapsulating it in custom built-ins.

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SONNENTAG, Paul, 2019. Do-it-yourself information software. pdf [Accessed 4 September 2024].

Rizwan, O. (2018). Notes from dynamicland: Geokit. post

LIEBERMAN, Henry, 2001. Your Wish is my command: programming by example. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. Morgan Kaufmann series in interactive technologies. ISBN 978-1-55860-688-3. 005.2