MiniZinc 2.0 Workshop

                           MiniZinc 2.0 Workshop

          Held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on

             Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP'11

                     12-16th September 2011 Perugia, Italy

              http://www.g12.csse.unimelb.edu.au/minizinc/workshop

                             Call for Papers

MiniZinc is a simple and expressive modelling language that is easy to

interface to different solvers. It maps models in MiniZinc down to FlatZinc

is a manner that is specializable to different underlying solvers.  It is

currently supported by constraint programming systems Gecode, Eclipse

Prolog, Sicstus Prolog, JaCoP, solvers from the G12 group, the mathematical

programming solver SCIP, as well as having translators that create SAT

models from FlatZinc (fzntini), and create SMT models from FlatZinc

(fzn2smt).

MiniZinc is a leading candidate for standardizing modelling for constraint

programming, since it is the modelling language currently supported by most

systems.

The aim of this workshop is to examine the design decisions of MiniZinc and

set out the requirements for version 2.0. We wish to take input from the

whole CP community, not just solver developers.  Papers should be between 2

and 15 pages in LNCS format.  They should be submitted through EasyChair at

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mzn2011 by Friday June 24th 2011.

Papers could be many different kinds: for example

       Feature requests

       Standardization proposals

       Discussion papers

       Benchmark proposals (in MiniZinc presumably)

       Experience reports

The aim is to group papers into subjects and spend the half day workshop

having short talks and a very informal discussion framework.

The list of potential topics is substantial

Language issues: do we want new features, how do they look, what

will this require of FlatZinc if anything

+ Type extensions

+ Recursion

+ Symmetry

+ Annotations

+ Search

+ Integration

+ Visualization

+ Integrated Development Environment

+ Problems with current system

+ Other features

FlatZinc: what is missing from FlatZinc. How do we add it in a way that does not overly burden solver writers

+ Constraints

+ Runtime options

+ Statistics

+ Standardization

+ Other features

Outreach: how do we proselytise MinZinc better

+ Competition

+ Forum

+ Problem repository

+ Tutorial

+ Teaching material

+ Making it a standard

+ Governance/Directing MiniZinc