Distributed Cooperative Formal Methods Tools

: This paper describes some tools to support formal methods, and conversely some formal methods for developing such tools. We focus on distributed cooperative proving over the web. Our tools include a proof editor /assistant, servers for remote proof execution, a distributed truth protocol, an editor generator, and a new method for interface design called algebraic semiotics, which combines semiotics with algebraic specification. Some examples are given. 1. Introduction Formal methods have been used to prove correctness of software, but this task is known to be difficult, for various reasons [5, 13]. New technologies -- the internet, the web, multimedia, applets, etc. -- offer exciting opportunities to reduce this difficulty that have not yet been much explored. We seek to build industrial strength formal method tools for distributed work by ordinary software engineers over the web, especially for concurrent systems. This involves several challenging subtasks, including a practical ..