35 research outputs found
Isabelle/PIDE as Platform for Educational Tools
The Isabelle/PIDE platform addresses the question whether proof assistants of
the LCF family are suitable as technological basis for educational tools. The
traditionally strong logical foundations of systems like HOL, Coq, or Isabelle
have so far been counter-balanced by somewhat inaccessible interaction via the
TTY (or minor variations like the well-known Proof General / Emacs interface).
Thus the fundamental question of math education tools with fully-formal
background theories has often been answered negatively due to accidental
weaknesses of existing proof engines.
The idea of "PIDE" (which means "Prover IDE") is to integrate existing
provers like Isabelle into a larger environment, that facilitates access by
end-users and other tools. We use Scala to expose the proof engine in ML to the
JVM world, where many user-interfaces, editor frameworks, and educational tools
already exist. This shall ultimately lead to combined mathematical assistants,
where the logical engine is in the background, without obstructing the view on
applications of formal methods, formalized mathematics, and math education in
particular.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453
Capturing Hiproofs in HOL Light
Hierarchical proof trees (hiproofs for short) add structure to ordinary proof
trees, by allowing portions of trees to be hierarchically nested. The
additional structure can be used to abstract away from details, or to label
particular portions to explain their purpose. In this paper we present two
complementary methods for capturing hiproofs in HOL Light, along with a tool to
produce web-based visualisations. The first method uses tactic recording, by
modifying tactics to record their arguments and construct a hierarchical tree;
this allows a tactic proof script to be modified. The second method uses proof
recording, which extends the HOL Light kernel to record hierachical proof trees
alongside theorems. This method is less invasive, but requires care to manage
the size of the recorded objects. We have implemented both methods, resulting
in two systems: Tactician and HipCam
A Vernacular for Coherent Logic
We propose a simple, yet expressive proof representation from which proofs
for different proof assistants can easily be generated. The representation uses
only a few inference rules and is based on a frag- ment of first-order logic
called coherent logic. Coherent logic has been recognized by a number of
researchers as a suitable logic for many ev- eryday mathematical developments.
The proposed proof representation is accompanied by a corresponding XML format
and by a suite of XSL transformations for generating formal proofs for
Isabelle/Isar and Coq, as well as proofs expressed in a natural language form
(formatted in LATEX or in HTML). Also, our automated theorem prover for
coherent logic exports proofs in the proposed XML format. All tools are
publicly available, along with a set of sample theorems.Comment: CICM 2014 - Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (2014
User-friendly Support for Common Concepts in a Lightweight Verifier
Machine verification of formal arguments can only increase our confidence in the correctness of those arguments, but the costs of employing machine verification still outweigh the benefits for some common kinds of formal reasoning activities. As a result, usability is becoming increasingly important in the design of formal verification tools. We describe the "aartifact" lightweight verification system, designed for processing formal arguments involving basic, ubiquitous mathematical concepts. The system is a prototype for investigating potential techniques for improving the usability of formal verification systems. It leverages techniques drawn both from existing work and from our own efforts. In addition to a parser for a familiar concrete syntax and a mechanism for automated syntax lookup, the system integrates (1) a basic logical inference algorithm, (2) a database of propositions governing common mathematical concepts, and (3) a data structure that computes congruence closures of expressions involving relations found in this database. Together, these components allow the system to better accommodate the expectations of users interested in verifying formal arguments involving algebraic and logical manipulations of numbers, sets, vectors, and related operators and predicates. We demonstrate the reasonable performance of this system on typical formal arguments and briefly discuss how the system's design contributed to its usability in two case studies
Industrial-Strength Documentation for ACL2
The ACL2 theorem prover is a complex system. Its libraries are vast.
Industrial verification efforts may extend this base with hundreds of thousands
of lines of additional modeling tools, specifications, and proof scripts. High
quality documentation is vital for teams that are working together on projects
of this scale. We have developed XDOC, a flexible, scalable documentation tool
for ACL2 that can incorporate the documentation for ACL2 itself, the Community
Books, and an organization's internal formal verification projects, and which
has many features that help to keep the resulting manuals up to date. Using
this tool, we have produced a comprehensive, publicly available ACL2+Books
Manual that brings better documentation to all ACL2 users. We have also
developed an extended manual for use within Centaur Technology that extends the
public manual to cover Centaur's internal books. We expect that other
organizations using ACL2 will wish to develop similarly extended manuals.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2014, arXiv:1406.123