Abstract
Cooperative environments to support Software Development (CSD) have as main goal to enable several users connected over network to work together in order to develop software. They have to solve problems such as: coherence maintenance of the software project through the distributed system by managing possible conflicts between local versions of each group member and promote the necessary mechanisms for the inter-group awareness and integrity We introduce in this paper a distributed solution to support CSD by describing our own prototype: a Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) architecture for software development. It enables a group of developers (2 to 4), possibly located at remote places and connected over network, to develop software together. A cooperative multimedia editing environment is available during the development cycle, enclosing mechanisms of computer-conferencing (text, audio and video communications).

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Abstract
This paper1 contains a proposal for a knowledge representation formalism based on a taxonomy of theories. It aims at clarifying the notions of inheritance and dependency among properties and classes, which are mixed together in the “inheritance networks” formalism, while also providing more expressiveness. A model-theoretic semantics in terms of sets of individuals is presented, which is parametric on the characterization of specificity. The case most thoroughly presented is rule inheritance which builds on the assumption that only facts have the force to impose overriding. A double denotation for classes, corresponding to two nested sets, is the key for interpreting defaults and exceptions. The problem of ambiguity propagation in the resulting system is addressed in the context of a discussion of the relationship between it and inheritance nets. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1993.

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