Exchange of Geometric Information Between Applications

Abstract

The Web Geometry Laboratory (WGL) is a collaborative and adaptive e-learning Web platform integrating a well known dynamic geometry system. Thousands of Geometric problems for Geometric Theorem Provers (TGTP) is a Web-based repository of geometric problems to support the testing and evaluation of geometric automated theorem proving systems. The users of these systems should be able to profit from each other. The TGTP corpus must be made available to the WGL user, allowing, in this way, the exploration of TGTP problems and their proofs. On the other direction TGTP could gain by the possibility of a wider users base submitting new problems. Such information exchange between clients (e.g. WGL) and servers (e.g. TGTP) raises many issues: geometric search - someone, working in a geometric problem, must be able to ask for more information regarding that construction; levels of geometric knowledge and interest - the problems in the servers must be classified in such a way that, in response to a client query, only the problems in the user's level and/or interest are returned; different aims of each tool - e.g. WGL is about secondary school geometry, TGTP is about formal proofs in semi-analytic and algebraic proof methods, not a perfect match indeed; localisation issues, e.g. a Portuguese user obliged to make the query and process the answer in English; technical issues-many technical issues need to be addressed to make this exchange of geometric information possible and useful. Instead of a giant (difficult to maintain) tool, trying to cover all, the interconnection of specialised tools seems much more promising. The challenges to make that connection work are many and difficult, but, it is the authors impression, not insurmountable.