Syntax improvement

This article is about planned development or proposed functionality. Comments welcome.

Changes completed

• Added 'ASSERT expr' statement for ModelSelfTesting.
• Added 'FIX varlist' statement to facilitate more concise specify methods.
• Added 'FREE varlist'
• Added short-form 'IMPORT librarystemname' (assumes registration function named is librarystemname_register)
• Added a standard fall-back implementation of 'default_all'
• New standard method 'on_load'.

Changes proposed

• Add a 'PLOT instance' statement (currently only possible with ExtPy).
• Add a 'SOLVE [WITH solver]' statement (can instead use IMPORT "sensitivity/solve")
• Add a 'SOLVER paramname := paramvalue' statement for setting solver params (can instead use IMPORT "johnpye/solvernotes")
• Add an 'OBSERVE varlist' statement (no alternative is yet in place)
• Add 'INDEPENDENT t IS_A time' statement for specifying independent variable in ODE/DAE simulation.
• Add LINK syntax
• Add 'der(x)' statement for declaring/expressing derivatives of other variables.
• Reinvent the syntax entirely, in a much more open-source friendly way. AscendXSyntax discussion.

No longer under consideration

• Add 'PYTHON METHOD methodname' (see ExtPy for alternative approach)
• Add 'METHOD methodname FROM PYTHON "filename"' (see ExtPy for alternative approach)

Discussions

• PerennialIssues with ASCEND methods, 2005.12.26
• ConnectingToHighLevelLanguages, 2006.01.08