Talk:TK Solver

TK Enthusiasm
I guess I allowed my enthusiasm for TK to carry me away so I have removed the "academic significance" section that I contributed. The article does say what TK is about, but it could use the improvements noted here.

--Bob Ferguson aka J Canuck

I am a long time user and fan of TK Solver and I would happily recommend TK to others on a personal basis. BUT this article reads like a features list pulled from sales literature -- really. No background. No comparisons. No critique. No limitations. No mention of alternative software. It does have an external link though --one-- to the vendors web site. This article looks like a ringer to me and seems in appropriate to Wiki. It seems to exist solely to promote the product. --Phil ABQ July 4, 2005 03:28 (UTC)

I have added a brief background on the history of TK Solver and linked it to a Bio I've posted on its creator, Milos Konopasek. It's a start, but there really should be a section devoted to the history of TK Solver - It has quite an impressive lineage.

-- Digiterata - April 1, 2006

TK Solver
I agree that this is article is nothing more than a sales pitch for TK Solver.

I used TK for many years. I think it's a great tool. Nothing else is quite like it. But it isn't perfect on several counts. And salesmen should not be allowed to write encyclopedia articles on their products.

A legitimate article on "TK Solver" would point out that it is a commercial software product implementing an iterative rules-based solver, provide a link to a general reference article, and let it go at that.

A separate article on iterative rules-based solvers should discuss background, theory, history, significant people, implementations, competitors, and alternatives.

For example, there is a long history of attempts to develop inferential, rules-based solvers. Just how does TK fit into that history?

For years, I have haunted web sites looking for a free alternative that works at least approximately like TK. Surely someone has written one, or is working on one. Why is this important? Because TK Solver is only available on Windows and perhaps Mac. If you run Unix or Linux, you're out of luck.

TK can become stuck on some problems, can fail to find a solution in others. It uses an assortment of solution methods. A real article would explain these various methods and show examples.

Charles Hethcoat

In order to be able to respectably remove the POV notice, I added an "alternatives" section. --New Thought 13:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

As usual, TK Solver gets no respect. In comparison, the Mathcad entry seems to be every bit as salesy as the TK Solver entry but there is no flag on that one. For whatever reason someone decided to add some text about TK being DOS-centric. What exactly does that mean? Meanwhile, I see no weaknesses section on the Mathcad page even though Mathcad has many when compared with TK Solver. Dr. Konopasek, the inventor of TK Solver, wrote dozens of papers on various aspects of the program. Perhaps those should be republished.

Mr. Hethcoat, please take a look at the TK Solver training document available as a free download from the UTS web site. Would the introduction section suit you as a summary of the solution methods? If not, I am sure that Dr. Konopasek's notes would be quite interesting for many wanting to learn more.

216.170.184.157 19:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC) Todd Piefer