Representing design dependencies in an issue-based style

A system that superimposes the issue-based and truth-maintenance approaches to provide a merged capability for recording design rationale is presented. The system presents the user with issue-based structures that can be annotated with informal information, and it provides an automated inferencing capability on those structures through an underlying truth-maintenance and expert system. The underlying truth-maintenance system lets the user carry out what-if analyses by choosing different resolutions to design issues, and it graphically shows the propagation of belief status among the components of an issue-based system´s style of display. A browser implementation of the merged issue-based and truth-maintenance dependency structures is described. The system is implemented on a locally developed Common Lisp graphical environment and includes a powerful and customizable generic browser.<>