  We present the syntax, semantics, and typing rules of Bull, a prototype
theorem prover based on the Delta-Framework, i.e. a fully-typed lambda-calculus
decorated with union and intersection types, as described in previous papers by
the authors. Bull also implements a subtyping algorithm for the Type Theory Xi
of Barbanera-Dezani-de'Liguoro. Bull has a command-line interface where the
user can declare axioms, terms, and perform computations and some basic
terminal-style features like error pretty-printing, subexpressions
highlighting, and file loading. Moreover, it can typecheck a proof or normalize
it. These terms can be incomplete, therefore the typechecking algorithm uses
unification to try to construct the missing subterms. Bull uses the syntax of
Berardi's Pure Type Systems to improve the compactness and the modularity of
the kernel. Abstract and concrete syntax are mostly aligned and similar to the
concrete syntax of Coq. Bull uses a higher-order unification algorithm for
terms, while typechecking and partial type inference are done by a
bidirectional refinement algorithm, similar to the one found in Matita and
Beluga. The refinement can be split into two parts: the essence refinement and
the typing refinement. Binders are implemented using commonly-used de Bruijn
indices. We have defined a concrete language syntax that will allow the user to
write Delta-terms. We have defined the reduction rules and an evaluator. We
have implemented from scratch a refiner which does partial typechecking and
type reconstruction. We have experimented Bull with classical examples of the
intersection and union literature, such as the ones formalized by Pfenning with
his Refinement Types in LF. We hope that this research vein could be useful to
experiment, in a proof theoretical setting, forms of polymorphism alternatives
to Girard's parametric one.
