How to Represent a Visual Specification

Andries, Marc; Engels, Gregor; Rekers, J.G.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-1676-6_8

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The symbols of any sentence (or word) w ∈ L are only related to each other by a linear ordering. In contrast, a sentence (or diagram or picture) p of a visual language VL over an alphabet A consists of a set of symbols of A that are, in general, related by several relationships {r 1 , …, r n } = R. Thus we can say that a picture p is given by a pair (s, r) where s ⊆ A is the set of symbols of the picture and r ⊆ s×R×s gives the relationships that hold in p. 1 In other words, p is nothing but a directed graph with edge labels drawn from R, and a visual language is simply a set of such graphs.…”

Section: Abstract Visual Syntaxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We can view a graph in the style of algebraic data types found in functional languages like ML or Haskell: a graph is either empty, or it is constructed by a graph g and a new node v together 1. Note that we do not need node labels to distinguish variables.…”

Section: An Inductive Graph Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [1,18,19] the authors recommend the separation of abstract syntax from concrete syntax. However, this is only partially achieved by those approaches, since they require a one-to-one correspondence between concrete and abstract syntax, and thus abstract syntax is intrinsically coupled very closely to concrete syntax.…”

Section: Syntax Of Visual Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Abstract Syntax and Semantics of Visual Languages

Erwig

1998

Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Abstract Visual Syntaxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Inductive Graph Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Abstract Syntax and Semantics of Visual Languages

Erwig

1998

Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…, p n (cp i ,cp n ) hold. For example, to build sentences of the Message Sequence Charts language, as reported in [Andries et al 1998], VALID is defined by @m ʦ Msg, ?l 1 ,l 2 ʦLines, s.t. origin(m,l 1 ), dest(m,l 2 ) ∧ @a ʦ Act ?i ʦ Inst s.t.…”

Section: Control Automata For Visual Interaction: Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specification and dialogue control of visual interaction through visual rewriting systems

Bottoni

Costabile

Mussio

1999

ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Computers are increasingly being seen not only as computing tools but more so as communication tools, thus placing special emphasis on human-computer interaction (HCI). In this article, the focus is on visual HCI, where the messages exchanged between human and computer are images appearing on the computer screen, as usual in current popular user interfaces. We formalize interactive sessions of a human-computer dialogue as a structured set of legal visual sentences, i.e., as a visual language, and show how rewriting systems can be generalized to specify both the pictorial and the computational aspects of visual languages. To this end, Visual Conditional Attributed Rewriting (VCARW) systems are introduced, and used for specification of visual languages. These specifications are given as inputs to a procedure illustrated in the article as a system of algorithms, which automatically generates control mechanisms of the interaction, thus favoring the design of more reliable and usable systems.

show abstract

“…Finally, we can mention [1,34]: two theoretical frameworks for defining graphical notations from concrete aspects to semantics. They supply a hierarchy of graph grammars to concentrate on concrete and abstract syntax aspects, but the semantics is relegated to textual annotations in natural language.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Toolbox for Automating Visual Software Engineering

Baresi

Pezzè

2002

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual diagrammatic (VD) notations have always been widely used in software engineering. Such notations have been used to syntactically represent the structure of software systems, but they usually lack dynamic semantics, and thus provide limited support to software engineers. In contrast, formal models would provide rigorous semantics, but the scarce adaptability to different application domains precluded their large industrial application. Most attempts tried to formalize widely used VD notations by proposing a mapping to a formal model, but they all failed in addressing flexibility, that is, the key factor of the success of VD notations. This paper presents MetaEnv, a toolbox for automating visual software engineering. MetaEnv augments VD notations with customizable dynamic semantics. Traditional meta-CASE tools support flexibility at syntactic level; MetaEnv augments them with semantic flexibility. MetaEnv refers to a framework based on graph grammars and has been experimented as add-on to several commercial and proprietary tools that support syntactic manipulation of VD notations.

show abstract

How to Represent a Visual Specification

Cited by 14 publications

References 8 publications

Abstract Syntax and Semantics of Visual Languages

Abstract Syntax and Semantics of Visual Languages

Specification and dialogue control of visual interaction through visual rewriting systems

A Toolbox for Automating Visual Software Engineering

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About