The Design Team

Apart from Professor Keedy the main participants in the design of Timor up to 2005 were Dr. Gisela Menger, with invaluable expertise in Java, and Dr. Christian Heinlein, with an equally extensive knowledge of C and C++. Dr. Menger's PhD work [5] provided most of the ideas for Timor's approach to handling collections of objects. Dr. Heinlein's eagle eye helped us avoid many errors, and he contributed many interesting ideas.

In a parallel project at the University of Ulm also led by Keedy, Dr. Klaus Espenlaub was at that time completing his PhD [6], designing a highly innovative initial operating system kernel for the SPEEDOS operating system project (see https://www.speedos-security.org/). SPEEDOS is a further development of the MONADS Project, see https://www.monads-security.org/). Also a C expert, Espenlaub provided invaluable help in those areas of the Timor design which overlapped with OS design, in particular with respect to persistence and security issues.

The team formally broke up in 2005 with the retirement of Prof. Keedy, but the work continued since then on an unofficial basis, especially with the help of Dr. Menger. The initial design of Timor has now been completed and is described in a short book which can be downloaded on this website [7]. What still remains to be done for Timor is a compiler for the language.

Mention must also be made of the work of two earlier assistants at Ulm, who contributed substantially to some of the basic ideas or Timor. Dr. Mark Evered was originally our top programming language expert and worked in the Ulm team from 1993 to 1998. He has also recently contributed an EBNF description for Timor, which appears in [7]. Dr. Axel Schmolitzky worked in the Ulm team from 1993 to 1999; his PhD work [8] strongly influenced the Timor idea of co-types. Together they had a strong influence on the Timor design.

NOTE:

If anyone is interested in developing a compiler for Timor, please contact Prof. Keedy, who is over eighty and unfortunately has little time available, because he is busy trying to complete several other projects, both in computer science and with respect to the reformation of society!