Temporal, spatial, and constraint handling in the Conceptual Programming environment, CP

The Conceptual Programming environment, CP, being developed at New Mexico State University (NMSU), is a complete knowledge representation programming environment for use with both dynamic, open-world, problem solving (weak) applications and static, closed-world, scientific analysis (strong) applications. CP is based upon a graphical methodology of visualization derived from John Sowa's conceptual graph theory. In this paper, we describe the formal basis for the internal CP representation and explain the mechanisms for the operators relating to the processing of time, space and constraints within the CP environment. The CP environment is a 'working' representation system, and makes a good foundation for suitable applications