Ready.
For the purposes of these Mid-80_xyz pages, we remain in the middle of the year 1980. Let's refer to a research idea, only if it were already published somewhere, by that time.
There are many fruitful ideas, here. The 1970s, was the last decade, if not the decade, of the major developments in programming. Little, if any, major idea has been introduced since then. This includes modularity, abstraction methods, structured programming, GUI-and-object-oriented programming, normal forms for databases, concurrent programming, verifying, etc. Therefore, we may discuss most of everything about programming, we would like to. For now, let's review net-formalisms, and software-methodologies.
Some of the ideas might have been popularized a little later, in later months of 1980, or in 1981. For example, object-oriented programming with GUIs had, finally, enjoyed public attention, with a 1981 Byte magazine cover story. This specific example is not a topic for review, yet, but if we would, then we could find the research articles, or presentations, in 1970s.
The research problems for net formalisms include:
Net formalisms (e.g: Petri nets), let abstract (represent) real-world, in terms of their well-defined elements (node, place, location, transition, gate-logic). Further precision is introduced with evaluated (interpreted) nets, with the extra resource (data) modeling, with evaluated feedback to the interpreter (e.g: E-nets).
Macros are for intuitive modularity, to ease the job for building models. If not properly reduced, macros must expand, or present a summary of what they mean, to make sense to a reader - whether the reader is a human, or an algorithm. A reduction of subnets to net elements is equivalent to the original abstraction, although this is not from the real world, but by a re-abstraction (shrinking) of the already represented model.
If there is a(n unresolved) non-determinism in a net, a reachability-test may fit it. If all such cases of preference (non-determinism) are resolved, either through data and procedures, or through (interactive) human-preference, then a deterministic interpreter is meaningful, too.
copycat82 is not Mid-80, in time, but it is nothing newer, either. That is, it would not be an exception, even if we were to mention among Mid-80 content, also what copycat82 contains.