-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IFIP Working Group 1.6 on Term Rewriting Report of the online business meeting: 4 October 2022 Chair: Cynthia Kop Co-Chair/Secretary: Carsten Fuhs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PARTICIPANTS Aart Middeldorp Carsten Fuhs Christopher Lynch Cynthia Kop David Plaisted Femke van Raamsdonk Hans Zantema Jakob Grue Simonsen Jörg Endrullis Jürgen Giesl Luigi Liquori Maribel Fernandez Martin Avanzini Nachum Dershowitz Nao Hirokawa Naoki Nishida Salvador Lucas Sandra Alves Silvia Ghilezan Takahito Aoto -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AGENDA (1) International School on Rewriting (ISR) (2) Rewriting List of open Problems (3) Co-location for the next in-person meeting of the WG (4) Planning future WG meetings (5) Other activities for the WG (6) Any other business -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) International School on Rewriting (ISR) Aart Middeldorp reported that ISR 2022 (Tbilisi, Georgia, 19 - 24 September 2022) had had four registration, none of them local. He mentioned that co-located parallel events at the Computational Logic Autumn Summit (CLAS) 2022 had drawn students away. He reported that the basic track had five attending students by the end of the course. The question was raised whether the location had been a good choice. Cynthia Kop pointed out that the on-going military conflict in the region had not been known when the location for ISR 2022 had been designated. Several other attendees suggested that under the given circumstances, including also the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the location had dissuaded participants. Hans Zantema mentioned that for ISR 2022, there had not been any other volunteers and that it would be better to run ISR only every two years. Carsten Fuhs pointed out that the original plan had been to run ISR in Madrid already in 2020, followed by ISR 2022 in Tbilisi. This plan had been thwarted by Covid. He also stated that Covid had turned out not to be over by the time of ISR 2022 and said that he could not blame any student who would not want to attend international events for this reason at this time. Hans Zantema and Aart Middeldorp reported that Johannes Waldmann had stepped down as the chair of the ISR Steering Committee and that Hans Zantema had volunteered to organise the election as, due to his retirement, he would not run for chair himself. Concluding this point of the agenda, Aart Middeldorp encouraged the participants to send their students to ISR 2024 in safe and climate-friendly Austria! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) Rewriting List of open Problems Prior to the present meeting, Jörg Endrullis had introduced the project of the renewal of the RTA List of open Problems (LooP) as the Rewriting List of open Problems with a modernised online interface at the physical WG meeting in Haifa on 31 July 2022. In the present meeting, he pointed out that due to lack of time there had not been any progress in the meantime. Cynthia Kop provided a summary of the topic based on the meeting in Haifa. Jörg Endrullis stated that there had been a suggestion to bind the list to a conference, e.g., FSCD. Cynthia Kop pointed out that this would lead to a broadening of the scope beyond rewriting. Jörg Endrullis responded that there were several ways to address this, such as using tags to keep topics separate or having different instances of the platform. Jakob Grue Simonsen stated that broadening the scope would also lead to more people and more potential maintainers. Jörg Endrullis reported that the first prototype was finished. Cynthia Kop suggested first to get the platform running and then potentially to contact FSCD. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) Co-location for the next in-person meeting of the WG Cynthia Kop reported that the current default conference for co-location of the annual in-person meeting of the WG was FSCD, with CADE, IJCAR, ... as potential alternatives. She raised the question whether we should change this. Jürgen Giesl mentioned that there were plans to co-locate CADE and FSCD in Rome in 2023 and that this would be a natural location. Cynthia Kop stated that in the absence of other opinions, FSCD would be the default. The suggestion was made to discuss this topic also together with item 4 of the agenda. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (4) Planning future WG meetings Cynthia Kop introduced the question whether to have WG meetings hybrid/online vs fully in-person, also with the goal of better attendance by non-members. She reported that the WG meeting in July 2022 together with FLoC had been in hybrid mode, which was initially fraught with difficulties, but worked much better by the end of FLoC, as more experience had been gained. Jürgen Giesl suggested that both co-locating with FSCD and hybrid mode were good ideas and that we should do both. Carsten Fuhs stated that FSCD would run using hybrid mode. Salvador Lucas suggested that an online business meeting would be good, but that co-location might lead to constraints by local organisers. There was some discussion whether to run an online meeting on top of an in-person meeting. The conclusion was reached that if there was a hybrid meeting with early announcement anyway, a separate online meeting would not be needed. Cynthia Kop thus stated that the aim would be that next WG meeting would be a hybrid meeting co-located with FSCD. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (5) Other activities for the WG Cynthia Kop raised the question whether the WG should have activities beyong the current ones (ISR, Rewriting LooP). Luigi Liquori suggested compiling a list of potential industrial applications of rewriting. As application topics, he mentioned cryptography, with a talk by Santiago Escobar at the recent CLAS 2022, and model checking for bug finding, with a virtual talk by Catherine Meadows. The question was raised whether such a list could be placed on https://rewriting.org. Nachum Dershowitz as the owner of the domain confirmed. Nachum Dershowitz and Luigi Liquori agreed to pursue the topic further. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (6) Any other business No further business was raised for this meeting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------