Getting Started

How to get started with Visual Prolog? The answer depends on what you know already.

No matter what prerequisites you have, it is a good idea to read the tutorials and you may choose to start with Visual Prolog for Tyros.

Starting from scratch

The book A Beginners Guide to Visual Prolog is a good starting point.

Alternatively, you can start with the Fundamental Prolog tutorials, which describes the basic ideas of "classical" Prolog programming. It uses Edinburgh/ISO Prolog syntax, which is simpler than Visual Prolog because it does not have any type declarations and no Object-Oriented overhead. The code from the examples can be run in PIE (Prolog Inference Engine), which is a Edinburgh/ISO Prolog interpreter written in Visual Prolog. PIE is supplied as an example with Visual Prolog. To run it, click "Browse" on the Open Project menu in Visual Prolog, then look in your Documents directory for Visual Prolog Examples and the directory pie within it, and open the project there.

Knowing traditional Prolog

The tutorials in the Fundamental Visual Prolog section describe differences between Visual Prolog and traditional Prolog, and introduce a program that is developed in Visual Prolog. You will be asked to download example projects devoted to family relations that are discussed in these tutorials.

Other tutorials discuss the Visual Prolog Integrated Environment (IDE) and various Visual Prolog language features.

These books are also good starting points:

• A Beginners Guide to Visual Prolog by Thomas W. de Boer
• Visual Prolog for Tyros by Eduardo Costas

Video Tutorials

• Hello World! Video Tutorial covers basic IDE functionality
• IntelliSpeed Video Tutorial demonstrates the context sensitive keyboard accelerator and browse system.

Online Help System

Once you are familiar with the concepts and principles, you also can use reference material from the following sections of the Help system:

• The Language Reference that describes the syntax and semantics of the Visual Prolog language.
• Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Help.
• Prolog Foundation Classes (PFC) reference documentation.

This Help is reference material rather than tutorial, meaning that it is not a good place to learn Visual Prolog, but it is a very good place to seek answers to specific questions.

The Help system is available from the Integrated Development Environment.

Community

You are also welcome to join Visual Prolog world-wide Community and seek assistance or share your knowledge in the Visual Prolog Discussion forums and this wiki.

You will find a lot of interesting information in the Visual Prolog Tips, How To's, Code Samples, etc. And, of course, you are also invited to contribute your own tips, etc.

Examples

In the distribution there is a number of example programs. You can install these examples from the IDE, just press Help -> Install Examples.... You can install these examples again and again, so do not worry about experimenting with them. You can also use them as a starting point for your own programs. Finally, you can download even more examples on Visual Prolog Examples and Demos.

Knowledge Base

If you come over a problem, while creating your project, and think that there is a bug in Visual Prolog, you can check Visual Prolog Knowledge Base. Here you will find descriptions of bugs and problems that the PDC knows about and is investigating for a possible future fix. Often we provide steps to work around the problem. The Knowledge Base is available from the IDE by If a bug is fixed in a new release of the product, the "Bug" article includes information about the product version, where the Bug is fixed.

You will also find a lot valuable information in Visual Prolog site.

Visual Prolog Tutorials, Visual Prolog Discussion forums, the Knowledge Base, and information about Visual Prolog updates are available directly from the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) via the WEB menu.

Prolog Develpment Center Site

We invite you to visit the Prolog Development Center site to find descriptions of real-world commercial projects written entirely in Visual Prolog for:

• Staff Planning
• Hospital Booking
• Airport Decision Support
• Airline Decision Support
• Shop Floor Scheduling
• Speech Based Solutions

We hope, you will enjoy Visual Prolog!