perlman@wanginst.UUCP (Gary Perlman) (05/23/86)
You can get a reprint of the following tech report by sending me your
full postal address.
Multilingual Programming:
Coordinating Programs, User Interfaces,
On-Line Help, and Documentation
Gary Perlman
School of Information Technology
Wang Institute of Graduate Studies
Tyngsboro, MA 01879 USA
WI Tech Report TR-86-05
May 1986
The philosophy behind multilingual programming is that software
development must deal evenhandedly with all parts of software products
if high quality software is going to be developed economically. The
high cost of software is not due to the difficulty of coding, but in
recoding and redocumenting software. Many expressions of the same
ideas must be constructed and coordinated. Program code and comments,
user interface and on-line help, and a variety of off-line documents,
all must be consistent. A solution to the coordination problem is
presented in this paper. Multilingual programming is a method of
developing software that uses a database of information to generate
multiple target languages like commented program code, user interface
languages, and text formatting languages.
The method begins with an analysis of a domain to determine key
attributes. These are used to describe particular problems in the
domain and the description is stored in a database. Attributes in the
database are inserted in idiomatic templates for a variety of target
languages to generate solutions to the original problem. Because each
of these solutions is based on the same source database of
information, the solutions (documents, programs, etc.) are consistent.
If the information changes, the change is made in the database and
propagated to all solutions. Conversely, if the form of a solution
must change, then only the templates change. The method saves much
effort for updates of documents and programs that must be coordinated
by designing for redesign.
An early version of this paper was presented at the ACM SIGDOC Fourth
Int'l Conf. on Systems Documentation in Ithaca, NY, June 1985.
--
Gary Perlman Wang Institute Tyngsboro, MA 01879 (617) 649-9731
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