Visual Patterns in the VLEli System

Abstract

Visual languages have an important role in modelling systems, in specification of software, and in specific application domains. A processor for a visual language consists of a graphical frontend attached to phases that analyse and transform the visual programs. Hence, the construction of a visual language processor requires a wide range of conceptual and technical knowledge: from issues of visual design and graphical implementation to aspects of analysis and transformation for languages in general. We present a powerful toolset that incorporates such knowledge up to a high specification level. Visual editors are generated by identifying certain patterns in the language structure and selecting a visual representation from a set of precoined solutions. Visual programs are represented by attributed abstract trees. Hence, further phases of processing the visual programs can be generated by state-of-the-art tools for language implementation. We demonstrate that ambitious visual languages can be implemented with reasonable small effort and with rather limited technical knowledge. The approach is suitable for a large variety of visual language styles.KeywordsVisual PatternVisual LanguageTopmost LayerVisual ProgramAttribute GrammarThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.