Research
Summary of Interests:
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The mathematical and cognitive understanding of diagrammatic notations
for the specification, development and reasoning about software; domain-specific
programming languages.
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Category theory, on a `need-to-know' basis.
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Applications to programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
Since its commencement in January 2000, this EPSRC (UK governement) funded
project has been my main research occupation.
Assorted Documents:
(in chronological order)
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K. Tourlas. Semantic
analysis and design of languages for Programmable Controllers.
Masters Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1996 (gzip-ed postscript)
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S. Anderson and K. Tourlas. Diagrams
and Programming Languages for Programmable Controllers. Proceedings
of Formal Methods Europe 97 (gzip-ed postscript)
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S. Anderson and K. Tourlas. An
Assessment of the IEC 1131-3 Standard On Languages for Programmable Controllers.
SafeComp 97 (gzip-ed postscript)
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S. Anderson and K. Tourlas. A
Language for Programmable Controllers. Unpublished notes detailing
an operational semantics for a rationalisation of IEC 1131-3 function blocks.
(gzip-ed postscript)
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S. Anderson and K. Tourlas. Design
for Proof: An Approach to the Design of Domain-Specific Languages.
Third FMICS (Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems) Workshop,
1998 (gzip-ed postscript)
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S. Anderson and K. Tourlas. Design
for Proof: An Approach to the Design of Domain-Specific Languages.
Revised version. Formal Aspects of Computing, vol 10, pages 452--468, 1998
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C. Gurr and K. Tourlas. Formalising
Pragmatic Features of Graph-based Notations. Proceedings of the
1999 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages. (gzip-ed postscript)
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C. Gurr and K. Tourlas. Towards
the Principled Design of Software Engineering Diagrams. Proceedings
of ICSE 2000, the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering.
(gzip-ed postscript)
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The slides
(in gzip postscript) from a talk I gave in Birmingham
on 27th October 2000. My notes will also appear here, shortly...
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My Ph.D thesis
on
Diagrammatic Representations in Domain-Specific Languages (approx.
150 pages). Abstract.
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J. Power and K. Tourlas. An
Algebraic Foundation for Higraphs. Proceedings of the Conference
on Computer Science Logic (CSL), 2001. (g-zipped postscript)
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J. Power and K. Tourlas. An
Algebraic Foundation for Graph-based Diagrams in Computing. Proceedings
of the 17th Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics
(MFPS), 2001. (g-zipped postscript)
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S. Anderson, J. Power and K. Tourlas. Reasoning
in Higraphs with Loose Edges. Proceedings of the Conference on
Visual Languages and Formal Methods (VLFM), 2001. (Part of the IEEE Symposium
on Human-centric Computing Environments) (g-zipped postscript)
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S. Anderson, J. Power and K. Tourlas. Zooming-out
of higraph-based diagrams: Syntactic and Semantic Issues. Proceedings
of CATS 2002, the Australasian Symposium on Computing, 2002. To appear
(g-zipped postscript)
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K. Tourlas. On Extending
Diagrammatic Notations by Means of Interpretation-Constraining Features.
In preparation, soon to become available on-line.
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I'm currently typesetting Algebras, Theories and Freeness: an Introduction
for Computer Scientists. Written in 1981 by R. Burstall and J. Goguen,
this is an out-of-print technical report which provides one of the most
accessible, gentle introductions to universal algebra I have encountered.
Please e-mail me if you require any
of the above documents in other formats.
BibTeX entries for the documents above may be found here.
Related Projects at Edinburgh
This is a link to Corin's
work on software architectures, with emphasis on diagrammatic representations
of software.
This project looked at the graphical notations used or mandated in
safety
cases, which are collections of documents that present the arguments
for believing that a proposed potentially-dangerous system is acceptably
safe.