Alma Desiderata

Reasoning Features

• Set Reasoning
• Native integer/counting support
• More robust negative introspection
• Able to change representation of belief, rather than recant and re-add (Additional Thoughts) (Want to incorporate some aspect of stream reasoning - the database is not static)
• Able to have differing levels of priority or trust in facts known
• A hybrid of fif and if that allows contraposition, as if does, but also only asserts the conclusion if all premises are in the database, as fif does; intended to avoid swamping of database while also allowing contrapositives.
• If eval_bound needs arguments bound, desirable to have a way for positive introspection to, with something like eval_bound(pos_int(something(X)), []), query if there exists any "something" in the database. (Q: Would this really be useful?)

Agent Features

• "Sense of self"
  • Recognition that self is an agent
  • Recognition that other agents have differing beliefs
• Attention mechanism
• Goals, planning
• Distinguish between beliefs and world

User Friendliness Features

• Easier to start and run (no list of required startup commands)
• Better documented
• Error handling for invalid formulas that cannot be used for inference; currently these fail silently (at least when read from a file) and can easily appear to be buggy cases for valid formulas unless the error in the formula is detected. (Presumably a formula not parsing as a valid string of the Alma language would be easy to report?)
• For formulas not used in the rewritten CNF form (e.g. fif rules), display the original format when printing the database, for clarity.