Interactive Formal Specification for Mathematical Problems of Engineers

Abstract

The paper presents the second part of a precise description of the prototype that has been developed in the course of the ISAC project over the last two decades. This part describes the "specify-phase", while the first part describing the "solve-phase" is already published.In the specify-phase a student interactively constructs a formal specification. The ISAC prototype implements formal specifications as established in theoretical computer science, however, the input language for the construction avoids requiring users to have knowledge of logic; this makes the system useful for various engineering faculties (and also for high school).The paper discusses not only ISAC's design of the specify-phase in detail, but also gives a brief introduction to implementation with the aim of advertising the re-use of formal frameworks (inclusive respective front-ends) with their generic tools for language definition and their rich pool of software components for formal mathematics. 01 type Pre_Conds.T = (bool * term) list; 02 type Pre_Conds.unchecked_pos = (term * Position.T) list 03 type Pre_Conds.checked_pos = bool * ((bool * (term * Position.T)) list)