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authorDavid Aspinall2004-02-07 19:31:13 +0000
committerDavid Aspinall2004-02-07 19:31:13 +0000
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-<?php
- require('functions.php3');
- small_header("Proof General Mission (draft)");
- ?>
-
-<center>
-<h2>Mission Statement</h2>
-<h2>Proof General Developers</h2>
-<h2>March 2000</h2>
-</center>
-
-<p>
-We seek to provide an interface suite for helping users interact with
-<a href="#pas"><i>proof assistants</i></a>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Our approach is based on these principles:
-<ul>
-<li>
-Be useful to both <a href="#experts"><i>experts and novices</i></a>.
-</li>
-<li>
-Be <a href="scalable"><i>scalable</i></a> to large proof developments.
-</li>
-<li>
-Be <a href="#learn"><i>easy to learn</i></a>,
-yet still provide advanced features.
-</li>
-<li>
-Be <a href="#generic"><i>generic</i></a>
-to support many proof assistants with
-a uniform interaction mechanism.
-</li>
-<li>
-Be a <a href="#quality"><i>high-quality</i></a> research prototype.
-</li>
-</ul>
-</p>
-<p>
-Above all, we take a <i>pragmatic</i> approach to constructing
-interfaces. Our primary aim is to provide a tool which is
-immediately useful for proof engineering.
-</p>
-<p>
-This aim means that we harness a range of
-<a href="#proven">proven techniques</a>
-reimplemented in our generic system.
-Nevertheless, by the act of constructing Proof General, we do invent
-and incorporate some <a href="#novel">novel advances</a> which
-contribute to research in the field.
-</p>
-
-<hr>
-<p>
-</p>
-<h2>Footnotes and elaboration</h2>
-
-<dl>
-<?php dt("Proof assistants.","pas") ?>
-<dd>
-Computer programs for constructing formal machine proofs. Terminology
-varies; we include all kinds of theorem proving systems
-which involve user interaction while a proof is constructed.
-We currently focus on systems based on a notion of <i>proof
-script</i>, which is a file containing a user-level representation
-of the proof or how it was constructed.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Experts and novices.","experts") ?>
-<dd>
-Many interfaces for proof assistants are aimed at novice or beginner
-users (and often used for teaching). Instead, we want to provide an
-interface which is useful for expert users in the first place.
-But we believe such a system can also be helpful for beginner users.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Scalability.","scalable") ?>
-<dd>
-Some interfaces fail to scale to large proof developments;
-we want Proof General to be useful for real-life, large
-projects, consisting of many theorems and theories.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Easy to learn.","learn") ?>
-<dd>
-It is difficult enough to learn how to use the logic and language
-of a proof assistant, without an extra effort for learning its
-interface. We want to provide a friendly interface with
-intuitive features, hence a shallow learning curve.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Genericity.","generic") ?>
-<dd>
-Proof General is intended to be used with a variety of underlying
-proof assistants. We appreciate that different proof assistants are
-based on different logical principles, and implement different proof
-languages. Yet interaction between different systems often has a
-similar behaviour. We exploit this to provide a good user interface
-for many systems at once, saving repeated development effort by proof
-assistant implementors. It has the added benefit of providing a
-uniform interaction mechanism between different systems, making it
-easier for users to experiment with several proof assistants.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("High-quality.","quality") ?>
-<dd>
-The developers are working on Proof General in the academic sector,
-and engineering work itself is not directly funded. Despite this, we
-strive to follow good engineering practices to build a robust and
-maintainable system, which users can easily install (or test on the
-web). To this end, we employ open-source development with frequent
-test releases before stable releases, and high-priority attention to
-user suggestions and bug reports. We use CVS for source control,
-a strategy of bottom-up successive improvement, and provide support
-for each proof assistant by an experienced user/developer.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Proven techniques.","proven") ?>
-<dd>
-Amongst other features, Proof General currently includes
-<a href="features#script">script management</a>
-and
-<a href="features#pbp">proof-by-pointing</a>
-both championed in
-<a href="http://www-sop.inria.fr/croap/">Projet CROAP</a>.
-</dd>
-<?php dt("Novel advances.","novel") ?>
-<dd>
-Proof General also advances the state-of-the-art.
-For example, we introduced proof-by-pointing in
-an free-form environment,
-and extended script management to handle
-<a href="features#multiple">multiple files</a>.
-</dd>
-</dl>
-
-
-<?php
- click_to_go_back();
- footer();
-?>