SNAP: an experiment in natural language programming

Abstract

Computers are being used to a rapidly increasing extent, to manipulate and to generate materially, mechanically. (1) Many applications simply require items of information to be selected from a file of fixed format, heavily abbreviated records, and expanded into statements that are self-explanatory, and used perhaps in individual communications or incorporated in computer typeset compendia. At the other end of the spectrum are the interrelated challenges of mechanical indexing, abstracting, and translation. The burgeoning applications of computers to publishing, education, library work and information services in most major branches of science and scholarhsip are leading to a host of text processing and generating problems that span these limits of complexity.