Structure editors: Old hat or future vision?

Abstract

Structure editors emphasise a natural representation of the underlying tree structure of a program, often using a clearly identifiable 1-to-1 mapping between syntax tree elements and on-screen artefacts. This paper presents layout and behaviour principles for structure editors and a new structure editor for Lisp. The evaluation of the editor's usability reveals an interesting mismatch. Whereas by far most participants of a questionnaire intuitively favour the structure editor to the textual editor, objective improvements are measurable, yet not significant. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.