ISSUE-5: n-ary datatypes

This was an area where I have significant doubts about the member 
submission design.

I'll try and give a high-level overview of the doubts:

1) unimplemented

2) no design for declaring n-ary datatypes

3) no design for determining how to ensure decidability
    (maybe Jeff Pan's design?)

4) Jeff Pan's design does not ensure that decidability is preserved on 
merging

5) Problems with decidability on merging are *very* likely, (or require 
new research to show how to avoid them)

6) Various decidable subsets are possible, but no basis for making choices

7) rounding errors behave very differently from in traditional numeric 
applications - hence a solved problem (rounding) becomes an unsolved problem



I think that will do.

I'll have a go at sending an e-mail message on each of these topics, and 
also on what I think the high-level user goal is, and my preferred 
design as to how to meet that. A further nine e-mails :(.

I am not sure of the time line for that.

Jeremy

Received on Monday, 12 November 2007 16:23:31 UTC