WYSIWYM (interaction technique)

{{for|the editing paradigm|WYSIWYM}}

What you see is what you meant (WYSIWYM) is a text editing interaction technique that emerged from two projects at University of Brighton. It allows users to create abstract knowledge representations such as those required by the Semantic Web using a natural language interface. Natural language understanding (NLU) technology is not employed. Instead, natural language generation (NLG) is used in a highly interactive manner.

The text editor accepts repeated refinement of a selected span of text as it becomes progressively less vacuous of authored semantics. Using a mouse, a text property held in the evolving text can be further refined by a set of options derived by NLG from a built-in ontology. An invisible representation of the semantic knowledge is created which can be used for multilingual document generation, formal knowledge formation, or any other task that requires formally specified information.{{Cite web|url = http://oro.open.ac.uk/39116/1/Thesis_Final.pdf|title = Generating Natural Language Explanations For Entailments In Ontologies|date = 2013|access-date = 10 November 2014|website = Open Research Online|publisher = The Open University|last = Nguyen|first = Tu}}

The two projects at Brighton worked in the field of Conceptual Authoring to lay a foundation for further research and development of a Semantic Web Authoring Tool (SWAT). This tool has been further explored as a means for developing a knowledge base by those without prior experience with Controlled Natural Language tools.{{Cite journal|url = http://oro.open.ac.uk/40385/|title = How easy is it to learn a controlled natural language for building a knowledge base?|last = Williams|first = Sandra|date = 13 June 2014|journal = Fourth Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, 20–22 August 2014, Galway, Ireland (Forthcoming), Springer International Publishing AG|volume = 8625|pages = 20–32|access-date = 10 November 2014|isbn = 9783319102221|arxiv = 1406.2204}}