OpenCyc Documentation

[Note: '>' in front of a link name indicates an entry whose contents are not yet complete.]

Getting Started Knowledge Entry Programming
Natural Language Administration General Reference

Miscellaneous

Getting Started

>Introduction to OpenCyc

Installation Instructions. OpenCyc is available for download from the SourceForge OpenCyc download page. Installation instructions are in the Readme file in the distribution, and they can also be viewed here.

Intro Tutorial. In order to get started learning about OpenCyc, complete the sections of the Cyc 101 Tutorial titled, KB Browser Interface Overview and Foundations of Knowledge Representation with Cyc. Also, under the next section (Predicates and Denotational Functions), complete the first lesson (The Basics). It is recommended that you work with the lessons online, but you can also download them as PDF or PowerPoint files.

>CycL Exercises. These exercises are meant to be used following certain lessons in the Cyc Tutorial. If you access the Tutorial from Windows Explorer, you'll see links to these exercises in the Related Lessons column of the Lesson Resources frame. Otherwise, you can access the exercises here.

CycL Reference. CycL is Cyc's language for expressing common sense knowledge. If you're just getting started, you can just quickly review this reference, for now.

OpenCyc KB Browser Reference. The OpenCyc KB Browser is the main interface tool for accessing the OpenCyc Knowledge Base. It provides a means for browsing, modifying or adding to your local copy of the OpenCyc KB.

Knowledge Entry

OE Tutorials. If you are planning to do knowledge entry without the aid of a rapid knowledge formation (RKF) tool, you should complete all of the tutorial sections up to and including OE Example: Events and Roles. It is recommended that you work with the lessons online, but you can also download them as PDF or PowerPoint files.

CycL Reference. CycL is a formal language whose syntax derives from first-order predicate calculus (the language of formal logic) and from Lisp. In order to express common sense knowledge, however, it goes far beyond first order logic. If you're planning to do serious knowledge entry or ontological engineering, you'll need to master this document.

OE Reference Documents. Some of these documents are slightly dated. They have received some editing to remove whole sections that were no longer true or relevant, but there still may be some mistakes. For example, constants may be mentioned that are not in the OpenCyc KB. If anything here contradicts something you read in the PowerPoint-based tutorials, trust those tutorials rather than this.

Programming

>Intro to Programming with OpenCyc

Cyc Programming Reference Docs. These documents describe the functioning of Cyc circa 2000. They have been edited to remove any gross inaccuracies relative to the current system, but they do not yet reflect enhancements made since 2000 to the subsystems in question. Also, the documents may mention constants that do not exist or that have different names in the OpenCyc KB.

>Web Services via DAML

>Semantic Knowledge Source Integration

>OpenCyc Planner

Cyc API Reference. The Cyc Application Programmers Interface (API) is the protocol which allows applications to connect to and use the various CycL modules and functionality which together are used to maintain the Cyc Knowledge Base.

OpenCyc Java API Reference. Documentation of the OpenCyc Java Application Programming Interface. Auto-generated JavaDoc. The Java API is included in the OpenCyc package and is also available for download at the OpenCyc Project Site on SourceForge.

SubL Reference. SubL is a computer language built by members of Cycorp. SubL was written to support the CYC application, allowing it to run both under Lisp environments and as a C application generated by a SubL-to-C translator. The OpenCyc Knowledge Server comes with a built-in SubL interpreter, and SubL is also available through an API port, supporting server-side scripting. This document describes the primitive functions of SubL.

Natural Language

Intro to Cyc-NL. Cyc-NL is the natural language processing system associated with the Cyc knowledge base. The OpenCyc NL release includes a lexicon, a morphology component and a generation system, each of which is described here.

Dictionary Assistant. The Dictionary Assistant allows a user to hook natural language terms up with Cyc concepts so that those words can then be used to refer to those concepts. In this way, Cyc's vast store of knowledge is accessed via natural language. When a natural language, say English, word is hooked up with a concept, we say that the concept has been lexified. You use the Dictionary Assistant to "lexify" Cyc concepts.

WordNet Interface. WordNet is very large English lexical database in which words are organized into synonym sets, or "synsets". Many existing natural language processing systems make use of the WordNet database. The Cyc-WordNet Linking Tool allows users to state links between WordNet synsets and Cyc constants. The interface also allows the user to browse WordNet, and to see existing Cyc-WordNet links.

Administration

Supported Platforms. The beta versions of OpenCyc currently support Linux only. Red Hat and Mandrake have been confirmed as working. Others may or may not work at this time. We'll update the list when we get more feedback about what works. Version 1.0 of OpenCyc will also support Windows NT. No other platform support is planned at this time.

>Transcripts & the Agenda

>CycML Intro

General Reference

Miscellaneous

>Mapping Ontologies into Cyc (white paper)