Constructing an integrated visual programming environment

Abstract

This paper presents an object-oriented architecture, called the Model-View-Shape (MVS) architecture, for constructing an Integrated Visual Programming Environment (IVPE), whose constituent tools deal with (fine-grained) language semantics, as well as a mass of graphics-drawing activities. This architecture enforces a layered and loosely-coupled structure, so that the user-interface part of components may be more independent, maintainable, and reusable than those proposed in the original model-view-controller architecture. An MVS class hierarchy, systematically constructed using C++, can be reused and extended with new semantics to rapidly develop new tools for an existing IVPE, or even an IVPE supporting more than one language. The present editors developed can be used to construct programs by specifying the associated How information in explicit (visual) or implicit (textual) ways, while the (incremental) flow analysers can help analyse incomplete program fragments to locate and inform the user of possible errors or anomalies during programming. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.