Pp. 429-443 in Proc. of the Workshop on Programming Logic, ed. P. Dybjer, L. Hallnäs, B. Nordström, K. Petersson, and J. M.Smith. Report 54, Programming Methodology Group, Univ. of Göteborg and Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, May 1989.
Subsequent to the study going into this report I have extended the analysis of the current literature described in section 7.5.4 by a similar study of the papers published in ACM Transaction on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 9, 1987. The attitudes to informal issues displayed in the 26 papers in this volume are surprisingly similar to those presented in section 7.5.4.
Strictly defined notation is familiar to anybody from its occurrence in games. More importantly, strictly defined notation is a building element of constructed models, employed widely in science and technology. Constructed models give rise to major issues related to their use and construction, essentially involving informal issues. Minor issues of constructed models are the relations between different models of the same modellee and between different sets of model building elements. Such issues have aspects that relate purely to strictly defined items. The one-sided attention given to purely formal issues in much literature on programming logic is characterized.