On Tuesday 15-Nov-2016 14:00, I will give a presentation about PIDE at Laboratoire Spécification et Vérification, Cachan (Paris). See also the official announcement.

Abstract:

Interactive theorem proving was historically tied to the read-eval-print loop, with sequential and synchronous evaluation of prover commands given on the command-line. This user-interface technology was adequate when Robin Milner introduced his LCF proof assistant in the 1970s, but today it severely restricts the potential of multicore hardware and advanced IDE front-ends.

The Isabelle Prover IDE breaks this loop and retrofits the read-eval-print phases into an asynchronous model of document-oriented proof processing. Instead of feeding a sequence of commands into the prover process, the primary interface works via edits over immutable document versions. Execution is implicit and managed by the prover in a timeless and stateless manner, making adequate use of parallel hardware.

PIDE document content consists of the theory sources (with dependencies via theory imports), and auxiliary source files of arbitrary user-defined format: this allows to integrate other languages than Isabelle/Isar into the IDE. A notable application is the Isabelle/ML IDE, which can be also applied to the system itself, to support interactive bootstrapping of the Isabelle/Pure implementation.

Further tool integration works via “asynchronous print functions” that operate on already checked theory sources. Thus long-running or potentially non-terminating processes may provide spontaneous feedback while the user is editing. Applications range from traditional proof state output (which often consumes substantial run-time) to automated provers and dis-provers that report on existing proof document content (e.g. Sledgehammer, Nitpick, Quickcheck in Isabelle/HOL). It is also possible to integrate “query operations” via additional GUI panels with separate input and output (e.g. for manual Sledgehammer invocation or find-theorems).

Thus the Prover IDE orchestrates a suite of tools that help the user to write proofs. In particular, the classic distinction of ATP and ITP is overcome in this emerging paradigm of Integrated Theorem Proving.

The Slides are available.