VinEd — Asystem for programmanipulation through user-definable simultaneous views

• DOI: 10.1007/s003780050016
• Publication Date: 2002-08-25T04:19:44Z
• Authors: Jorma Sajaniemi; Kari Ikonen
• Keywords: Representation; Program transformation

Programmers’ mental representations of programs do not obey the order and immediate content of program texts. Multiple visible representations, or views, of programs help programmers to construct mental representations needed in, e.g., maintenance tasks. We have implemented VinEd, a language-independent editor framework that supports an unlimited number of user-definable and editable views. Views are defined by transformation programs that construct views from the original representation. VinEd extends the notion of views to any activity that can be based on the original program, e.g., program compilation. Thus VinEd can be extended to include a complete set of programming tools.