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I’ve completed the better part of a major development in Isabelle, and is wondering how best to go about writing the corresponding academic paper.

From Isabelle sources I can generate a somewhat idiosyncratic take on such a paper. However, the default rendering of theorems, lemmas and definitions seems almost certain to alienate reviewers.

The LaTeX-sugar theories help, but apparently only if I manually restate the entire theory using anti-quotations.

Are there examples of Isabelle developments underpinning publications that I can look to for inspiration on how best to proceed here?

Søren Debois
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I have done that in the past (for my master's thesis), there is only one case where you should do that: the documentation of Isabelle and the documentation of Isabelle developments (like the AFP).

There are some people who do that (Makarius Wenzel, e.g., https://sketis.net/2019/11), similarly the "Concrete Semantics". However, this is not a great solution.

The reasons not to do that:

  1. The compilation takes much longer than using pdflatex, even if you base your work on an image of your development.

  2. Unless you type LaTeX macros directly, you are much more limited in what you can do (LaTeX wise). And if you do type latex macros directly, you cannot produce HMTL output anymore. So the gain of Isabelle is limited.

  3. Many conferences want to see LaTeX sources and they don't run Isabelle, so you will have to generate LaTeX at some point anyhow (and even possibly do some post-productions effects because Isabelle is not able to do some things).

  4. You rarely want to use the exact theorem of Isabelle (LaTeXsugar can help, but it is not perfect).

  5. What if you write the paper now and discover a typo you want to fix in 5 years? In 5 years, latex will still work. Isabelle2020 probably not.

  6. Do all your co-authors use Isabelle on all their computers, including your laptop if you are on vacation and have an emergency fix to do?

  7. And you will fight Isabelle a lot, for example:

    text " \begin{counterexample} "

    lemma True by auto

    text " \end{counterexample} "

    does not work, because text is its own environment, so you need post-production effects.

Basically, use the snippets mechanism to extract LaTeX out of the theories and then use your favorite LaTeX editor.

Mathias Fleury
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  • Interesting, thanks. I’ll wait for a few more answers before declaring an answer. In the meantime, could you post a link to your thesis? – Søren Debois May 09 '20 at 18:07
  • It is not really a paper, but if you are really interested http://fmv.jku.at/fleury/papers/Fleury-Master-Thesis.pdf – Mathias Fleury May 10 '20 at 17:03
  • I just checked: I cannot compile the sources anymore, because the format of the ROOT files has changed since 2015. – Mathias Fleury May 10 '20 at 17:10