CoFI semantics: report and future plans

[Don Sannella <dts@dcs.ed.ac.uk>]

Dear friends,

This is to report to those who weren't in Tarquinia and to remind
those who were about plans we agreed there.

What happened
-------------
The various people involved in writing the semantics of CASL tried
hard to finish work before the IFIP meeting in Tarquinia.  But time
proved to be insufficient -- only 1.5 weeks from the final draft of
version 0.97 until people had to leave for the meeting.  The present
state is the following:

  Basic specs, subsorts, structured specs: near completion
  Architectural specs: sketched
  Libraries: not yet done

I didn't have time to assemble these for publication on the CoFI WWW
pages before Tarquinia.  I distributed copies in Tarquinia.

What will happen now
--------------------
In Tarquinia we agreed to finish the semantics for version 0.97 and
publish it on the CoFI pages by about the end of June.

The next step will be the semantics for version 1.0.  We should
produce this BEFORE version 1.0 is finalized, so ideally as soon as
the draft of 1.0 becomes available in early September.  If 1.0 isn't
very different from 0.97, this should be feasible.  The result will be
published on the CoFI WWW pages.

Once a draft of the semantics of version 1.0 is ready, it will need to
be read carefully by as many people as possible, and polished for
final publication.  I hope that everybody reading this message will be
willing to take part in this process ...

Best regards,
Don Sannella