The item sharing approach has been implemented as an object-oriented extension of the uniform tabular algorithm as described above. We have further provided some parameterization with respect to possible applications. For example, it is possible to specify whether during one direction shared items should be ignored or not. This means that only during one direction, say parsing, passive items computed during generation are used, but that generation will ignore passive items computed during parsing. In the final chapter of this thesis we give an example of an application which can make use of this kind of parameterization.
Furthermore, also in the case of the shared item method the Prolog-like interactive mode is still available (see section 4.14). This gives the possibility to simulate some sort of preference-based behaviour, because the user can interactively choose the most appropriate answer. In the final chapter we will come back to the issue of preference-based strategies.
In the chapter 5 we show in detail how the item sharing approach is used for performing self-monitoring and revision during generation.