AD/IT (Abstract Decision/Interactive Trees)

See the download page to obtain this program

Description

AD/IT is an acronym for Abstract Decision/Interactive Trees. See the AD/IT home page for an overview of AD/IT and some references. AD/IT supports the definition, translation and formal analysis of decision trees. (This is entirely unconnected with the ADIT trademark held by Adit Ltd. and with any products or services of this company.)

Usage

A single command adit_convert take on or more file names on the command line. The suffixes of these files are inferred from the translation being performed. adit_convert is used with one or more files and the following options:

-c

convert to AD/IT notation (e.g. file.tree to file.adit)

-e level

error reporting level: 0 = all, 1 = notes (default), 2 = errors, 3 = panics

-g level (for -l)

gate hiding: 0 = chance uses hidden gates and the user may navigate back (default), 1 = chance uses internal events and the user may navigate back, 2 = chance uses hidden gates and the user may not navigate back, 3 = chance uses internal events and the user may not navigate back

-h

print usage as help

-i indent

indentation level as a number of spaces (default 2)

-l

convert to Lotos notation (e.g. file.tree to file.lot)

-t

convert to CGT notation (e.g. file.adit to file.tree)

-w width (for -l)

line width as a number of characters (default 80)

-x

convert to XML notation (e.g. file.tree to file.xml)

As an example, adit_convert -l -i4 -w60 walk will translate walk.adit to walk.lot using 4 spaces for indentation and 60 characters per line.

Installation

The adit directory can be placed anywhere convenient. The bin sub-directory needs to be cited in PATH. In addition, the m4 sub-directory needs to be cited in M4PATH. Both of these are normally set as environment variables according to the operating system and shell in use.

Note that the AD/IT distribution is not complete in itself. It is necessary to have or obtain the following:

• GNU M4 should be available from most archive sites. M4 is available on many platforms including Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Unix variants. The author uses Version 1.4.N of M4, though earlier versions may also work. Note that GNU M4 is essential since it includes more features than the M4 distributed with some Unix systems.
• Perl should be available from CPAN archive sites. Perl is available on many platforms include Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Unix variants. Change the script headers if Perl is not installed in /usr/bin/perl5.
• To formally analyse the generated specifications, you will need Lola/Topo (e.g. version 3.6 onwards) or CADP. The author has a version of Lola/Topo compiled for CygWin on Windows.
• To explore the trees interactively, you will need a compatible viewer program such as the CGT Viewer.

Sample Decision Trees

The tree sub-directory contains example decision trees in various forms. The .adit files are the primary ones, the others being generated from this by adit_convert. Note that most of these examples were developed by the CGT project and are provided courtesy of this project team. The author's role has just been to abstract and re-format these examples for use with AD/IT.

Licence

This program is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation - either version 2 of the License or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but without any warranty, without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

History

Version 1.0: Ken Turner, 11th June 2007

• internal version

Version 1.1: Ken Turner, 18th October 2007

• first public version

Version 1.2: Ken Turner, 23rd October 2008

• Lotos template changed to match new version of walk example
• Back not translated in a question unless -g requires it

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