Glossary

This page defines the words these docs use in a fixed sense and that no single reference page owns. A construct, such as a parameter or a macro, is defined on its language page.

The file and what reads it

Spec

The file as written, checked: what to_spec returns (reading a loaded model).

Program

What the file means, spec.program: every name typed, every macro expanded, every operator a node.

Load

What to_spec does. "Refused at load" means to_spec raises, before any data exists.

Bind

What a consumer does when it puts data on a program. A rule about numbers can be checked only then, and the language checks none itself.

Consumer

A tool that reads a spec: an engine that binds data and builds the rows a solver takes, a renderer such as the typesetter, or a checker (what counts as language).

Declaration

One named entry under one of the top-level keys: one dimension, one parameter, one constraint (file shape).

Coordinates

Label

One member of a dimension, wind say. The labels arrive with the data, in the order that shift, sum_back and position() count along.

Coordinate

One point of a declaration's dimensions: one generator in one snapshot. A variable has one column at each coordinate it is built at, and a constraint has one row.

Frame

A declaration's own dimensions. An expression, a mask and a bound parameter must fit inside the frame they sit in (how dimensions combine).

Group

The labels that one value of a relation column collects. within= keeps a shift, a sum_back or a position() inside each group.

Masks and absence

Mask · predicate

A predicate is a true-or-false expression in the where grammar. A mask is a predicate on a declaration, and the coordinates it admits.

Absence

No value at a coordinate. A masked-out variable has no column there, and a row that reads it is not built (absence).

Missing row

A coordinate that a parameter's table has no row for. It is not absence: it reads as 0 in arithmetic and as false in a where (what creates absence).

Kinds of construct

Primitive

A construct built into the language, which every engine implements and the typesetter prints: the operators and the where comparisons.

Formulation

A block that states ordinary variables and constraints rather than being one: piecewise: and sos: (piecewise curves and SOS).

A request for a new construct is a macro, a primitive or a formulation, or it is refused (how a new construct enters).

Words with two senses

These words mean two things in these docs. The sentence around each one says which.

Word	One sense	The other sense
row	a constraint at one coordinate	one line of a parameter's or a relation's table
column	a variable at one coordinate	one column of a data table or a relation
set	an sos: entry	the set symbol of a dimension, \(\mathcal{G}\), in the legend
regime	one case of a cases: block	one of two constraints, each under its own where:
domain	a variable's continuous, integer or binary	the rows that hold a curve's link inside its breakpoint range
program	spec.program, the typed model	a linear or quadratic program, the problem a solver takes
the rows	the constraint rows of a model	the expanded model: the spec a formulation is written out as