McCullough Knowledge Explorer
            and the MKR language

                  Dr. Richard H. McCullough
                        Knowledge Engineer

What is Knowledge Explorer?

McCullough Knowledge Explorer (MKE) is an interactive tool for organizing knowledge. It helps the user to record, change and search knowledge, and provides extensive error checking to ensure the internal consistency of the knowledge. Interaction with MKE uses the MKR language. MKR is a very-high-level knowledge representation language with simple English-like statements, questions and commands, plus UNIX-shell-like variables, methods and control structures.

Learning the MKR language is facilitated by a syntax checker and a menu interface. The syntax checker provides a fast check of input knowledge. The menu interface prompts the user for all necessary information, and automatically generates the correct input syntax.

What is Knowledge?

Knowledge is an identification of the facts of reality. Propositional knowledge is knowledge expressed using words and sentences. The principal internal knowledge structures of MKR/MKE are entity-characteristic-proposition hierarchies with space-time-dependent events.

The principal external knowledge structures are RDF files and MKR text files (transliterated English, hierarchy outlines, relational databases).

Semantic Web Applications

MKR is a general-purpose knowledge representation language which is applicable to any domain. It is ideally suited for Semantic Web applications. MKE "services" include many consistency checks, knowledge base queries, knowledge base statistics, and commands to dynamically modify the instance-class hierarchy. MKE is implemented using the Unicon and KornShell languages, providing easy integration with Unicon procedures, shell scripts, Linux/Windows commands, web pages and standard databases.

The MKR language is more powerful and more user-friendly than the OWL language. MKR extensions include context, questions, commands and n-ary relations. MKE/MKR provides no direct support for RDF model theory semantics -- it uses "natural language semantics" of the real world that we live in, not possible worlds.

MKE provides a user-friendly interface to the Open Directory Project and Stanford TAP knowledge bases. An interface to the OpenCyc knowledge base is under development.

More Information

The MKR language

• Do you speak MKR?
• MKR introduction
• MKR theory
• KR-lanugage email group

The MKE program

• Can you use MKE?
• Answering questions with MKE + TAP + OpenCyc + Google + Amazon
• Making statements with MKE + TAP
• MKE applications

MKR/MKE documentation

• MKR/MKE tutorial
• MKE input menu
• MKR grammar
• MKR tokens
• MKR/MKE glossary
• References
• MKE Portable Application Description

New features in MKE version

4.1   new syntax for actions & commands

4.2   file system hierarchies

4.3   use Unicon instead of Icon

4.4   units & primitive concepts

4.5   internet hierarchies; Semantic Web applications

4.6   XML namespace lattice

4.7   semicolon terminates sentence

5.0   changed from shareware to open source

5.1   MKR/MKE glossary, MKR introduction

5.2   Parlett XML parser

5.3   new group definition syntax and MKR parser

5.4   namespace stack

5.5   RDF tabula rasa and triples

5.6   Google search and OWL ontology

5.7   redefined views: tabula rasa, rdf, rdfs, owl

5.8   user-defined verbs for binary relations

5.9   interface to Stanford TAP KB

6.0   new syntax for user-defined binary relation

6.1   new syntax for pronouns

6.2   interface to OpenCyc KB

6.3   hdo walks hierarchy, isp* generates unit hierarchy

Download MKE and other useful programs

Download Knowledge Explorer 6.3 now
and create your own knowledge base

• MKE for Windows (GNU Open Source) 5 MB
• MKE for Linux (GNU Open Source) 5 MB
• MKE Installation Instructions

Download Unicon 10.0 if you want to create
your own customized Knowledge Explorer

• Unicon for Windows (Open Source) 8 MB
• Unicon for Linux (Open Source) 4 MB
• Unicon source code (Open Source) 5 MB
• Unicon source code for Mac (Open Source) 4 MB

Download other useful programs if desired

• Cygwin Linux commands for Windows (GNU Open Source)
  
• UNX commands for Windows (GNU Open Source) 3 MB
• gcc for Windows (GNU Open Source) 9 MB
• CVS for Windows (GNU Open Source) 1.4 MB

• Rebol/Core for Linux (Rebol) 180 KB
• Rebol/Core for Windows (Rebol) 175 KB
• Parlett XML parser (Public Domain) 575 KB

• TAP Java client (Open Source) 4 MB
• OpenCyc Java client (Open Source) 40 MB
• Google Java client (Google) 666 KB
• Java2 SDK (Sun) 33 MB
• Jcon for Linux (U. of Arizona) 670 KB

Red Hat Linux

Simtel

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rhm@cdepot.net is a silver member of The Objectivist Ring