The CoFI Language Design Task Group was formed at the founding meeting of the Common Framework Initiative, in Oslo, September 1995. The working meetings held in Paris (November 1995), Munich (January 1996), Oxford (March 1996), Paris (May 1996), Munich (July 1996), Edinburgh (November 1996), and Paris (January and April 1997) helped to guide the subsequent design of CASL. The following persons have participated in some or all of these meetings: Egidio Astesiano, Hubert Baumeister, Jan Bergstra, Gilles Bernot, Didier Bert, Mohammed Bettaz, Michel Bidoit, Mark van den Brand, Maria Victoria Cengarle, Maura Cerioli, Christine Choppy, Ole-Johan Dahl, Hans-Dieter Ehrich, Hartmut Ehrig, Jose Fiadeiro, Marie-Claude Gaudel, Chris George, Joseph Goguen, Radu Grosu, Magne Haveraaen, Anne Haxthausen, Jim Horning, Hélène Kirchner, Hans-Jörg Kreowski, Bernd Krieg-Brückner, Pierre Lescanne, Tom Maibaum, Grant Malcolm, Karl Meinke, Till Mossakowski, Peter D. Mosses, Peter Padawitz, Fernando Orejas, Olaf Owe, Gianna Reggio, Horst Reichel, Don Sannella, Giuseppe Scollo, Amilcar Sernadas, Andrzej Tarlecki, Eelco Visser, Eric Wagner, Michal Walicki, and Martin Wirsing.
The acronym CASL for the Common Algebraic Specification Language was originally proposed by Christine Choppy.
This document has been developed by Peter D. Mosses, originally on the basis of the design proposals and notes made available before the Munich meeting in July 1996 and the agreements reached during that meeting. Its preparation has been greatly assisted by the timely production of the minutes of meetings by Christine Choppy.
Subsequent versions of this document have attempted to incorporate the improvements suggested in various comments and notes from the following persons: Egidio Astesiano, Hubert Baumeister, Jan Bergstra, Gilles Bernot, Didier Bert, Michel Bidoit, Pietro Cenciarelli, Maria Victoria Cengarle, Maura Cerioli, Christine Choppy, Ole-Johan Dahl, Marie-Claude Gaudel, Chris George, Joseph Goguen, Radu Grosu, Anne Haxthausen, Jim Horning, Hélène Kirchner, Hans-Jörg Kreowski, Bernd Krieg-Brückner, Till Mossakowski, Peter D. Mosses, Olaf Owe, Gianna Reggio, Erik Saaman, Don Sannella, Andrzej Tarlecki, Eelco Visser, Michal Walicki, Martin Wirsing, and Uwe Wolter.
The design of the abstract syntax and semantics of CASL was much assisted by the CoFI Semantics task group.
The concrete syntax (input syntax and display format) of CASL has been designed primarily by Michel Bidoit, Christine Choppy, Bernd Krieg-Brückner, and Frédéric Voisin, and coordinated by Peter D. Mosses. The design was assisted by the implementation of several prototype parsers for (basic and structured) CASL specifications: by Mark van den Brand and Bjarke Wedemeijer, using the ASF+SDF system; by Kolyang and Till Mossakowski, using Isabelle; by Christophe Tronche, using an LL(2) (top-down) parser generator; and by Frédéric Voisin, using an LALR(1) (bottom-up) parser generator. The display format used in this document has been implemented using LaTeX and Hyperlatex by Peter D. Mosses.
The illustrative examples of structured specifications have been provided by Michel Bidoit, Christine Choppy, Bernd Krieg-Brückner, and Frédéric Voisin.
The coordinator of the Language Design task group is Bernd Krieg-Brückner.