Exchange of Geometric Information Between Applications
This addresses the integration of educational and research tools in geometry, but it is incremental as it focuses on connecting existing systems without new methods or broad impact.
The paper tackles the problem of exchanging geometric information between two specialized e-learning and theorem proving platforms, proposing an interconnection approach to allow users to access and contribute to each other's resources. It identifies key challenges such as geometric search, knowledge classification, and technical integration, but does not present specific results or numbers.
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.