The uniform tabular algorithm is fully implemented in Common Lisp. It uses two well-tested existing tools: an advanced feature constraint-solver [Backofen and Weyers1993] and Fegramed, an interactive graphics editor for feature structures [Kiefer and Fettig1994]. Both tools have been developed as parts of the DISCO system, a natural language core system for German [Uszkoreit et al. 1994].
is a feature constraint solver capable of dealing with distributed disjunctions over arbitrary structures, negative co-references, full negation, and functional and relational constraints. It is the first (and to our knowledge the only) implemented feature constraint solver that integrates both full negation and distributed disjunctions. Although we have not made use of disjunction in this thesis, we have made use of them in some small grammars in order to show that our algorithm is also capable in dealing with more complex feature representations.
We will now describe some of the implementational aspects of our uniform tabular algorithm. This implementation description is not meant to be the only way or the best way to implement our uniform algorithm.