[m-rev.] for possible review: tidying up reference manual

[Mark Brown]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 5:15 PM Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2019, Zoltan Somogyi wrote:
> > On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 21:49:03 +1000 (AEST), Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
> >> Opturion has never used solver types.  Solver types were removed from
> >> G12 back when we were at NICTA, several years before Opturion was thing.
> >
> > ... by this you mean that you think solver types *in general* are not useful anymore,
> > and could be removed from the language.
>
> If there is a desire to support a CLP style constraint modelling
> interface in Mercury, then they are useful.  For G12, it was originally
> intended that Mercury be used as a CLP style modelling language *by
> humans*.   As it turned, we ended up using Mercury mostly as a solver
> implementation language and as a compilation target for other languages
> (e.g. Zinc).

As the person tasked with both adding solver types to the G12 code
base and, some years later, removing them, I can attest to this
(although I could never get the G12 leadership to acknowledge that
removing them was due to a change in the project scope).

> > Any opinions?

Since the authors of the solver types paper have, so far as I know,
all decided to distance themselves from that work, I think it is fine
if you don't want to include solver types in a future implementation.

Mark