The FRL Primer

Abstract

The Frame Representation Language (FRL) is an experimental language written to explore the use of frames as a knowledge representation technique. The term 'frame' as used in FRL was inspired by Minsky's [75] development of frame theory. FRL extends the traditional Property List representation scheme by allowing properties to have comments, defaults and constraints, to inherit information from abstract forms of the same type, and to have attached procedures triggered by adding or deleting values, or if a value is needed. We introduce FRL with the aid of a simple example: WHOSIS, a database of AI persons' names, addresses, interests and publications. A second section contains an abridged manual describing FRL's most-used commands and conventions.