tjw9202@ritcv.UUCP (Timothy J Wilson) (12/24/85)
Help! I am interested in finding out the current state of the art in "graphic programming langauges". These are langauges that use graphics as the mode of writing programs, not langauges for programming graphics. I am interested in this area as a possible MS thesis topic. In the August 1985 issue of IEEE Computer, an article by Georg Raeder describes a number of issues in graphical programming techniques. He also mentions some systems such as Omega at UC Berkley and his own PIP (programming In Pictures) system. Has anyone else had experience with this type of programming or with writing graphical programming langauges? I am considering writing a graphical programming langauge on the Macintosh, since graphics are easy to manipulate on the Mac. Any comments would be appreciated!! Thanks in advance!! (from me, my thesis advisors, and my family [ who hope I will graduate and make good use of my education someday!!]). Tim Wilson Rochester Institute of Technology ritcv ! tjw9202 PS Happy Holidays!!
richw@ada-uts.UUCP (12/26/85)
I just finished a M.S. thesis that's sorta related. I did the work in Smalltalk-80 and had a great time. Although I know little about the Macintosh, I'd strongly recommend considering Smalltalk, if you can get your hands on a relatively fast implementation. The Smalltalk system provides a large number of graphical "primitives"; maybe more (?) than the Mac. It's also an object-oriented language, which you may prefer over C or the like on a Mac. (I've heard about Smalltalk implementations on the Mac.) Anyway, here are a few references that may be of help. The first is the only I know of that talks about programming via a graphical interface: "Programming By Rehearsal", William Finzer & Laura Gould, Byte, June 1984, pp. 187-210 These talk about uses of graphics in programming environments: "Graphical Program Development with PECAN Program Development Systems", Steven P. Reiss, Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT / SIGPLAN Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments, Pittsburgh, PA, April 1984, Software Engineering Notes, 9, 3 and SIGPLAN Notices, 19, 5, both May 1984, pp. 30-41. "Magpie - An Interactive Programming Environment for Pascal", Norman M. Delisle, David E. Menicosy, and Mayer D. Schwartz, Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1985, Bruce D. Shriver (ed.), Volume II, pp. 588-595. These talk about using constraints to specify pictures -- they may not be of interest, but references are cheap... "Juno: A Constraint-Based Graphics System", Greg Nelson, Computer Graphics, 19, 5, July 1985, pp. 235-243. "IDEAL User's Manual", Christopher J. Van Wyck, Computer Science Technical Report No. 103, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, Dec. 17, 1981. The following is a very good thesis that talks about general methods for displaying arbitrary data structures: "Displaying Data Structures for Interactive Debugging", Brad A. Myers, CSL-80-7, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA, 1980 (A summary of this report appeared as "Incense: A System for Displaying Data Structures", Computer Graphics, 18, 3, July 1983). Finally, my thesis specifically dealt with "program animation", or the process of creating dynamic versions of programs which display a program's actions as they occur. The last reference is mine; reply via E-mail for more information or write to: Rich Wagner, 104 Langdon Ave., Watertown, MA 02172 "A System for Algorithm Animation", Marc H. Brown and Robert A. Sedgewick, Computer Graphics, 18, 3, July 1984, pp. 177-186. "Techniques for Algorithm Animation", Marc H. Brown and Robert A. Sedgewick, Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Science, 1985, pp. 104-113. "Animating Programs Using Smalltalk", Ralph L. London and Robert A. Duisberg, Computer, Vol. 18, No. 8, August 1985, pp. 61-71 "Program Animation Tools and Techniques", Richard M. Wagner, MIT S.B./S.M. Thesis, Nov. 1985