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Unix tools as visual programming components in a GUI‐builder environment
Author(s) -
Spinellis Diomidis
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.428
Subject(s) - computer science , unix , visual programming language , programming language , graphical user interface , software engineering , visual basic , pipeline (software) , component (thermodynamics) , operating system , software , physics , thermodynamics
Development environments based on ActiveX controls and JavaBeans are marketed as ‘visual programming’ platforms; in practice their visual dimension is limited to the design and implementation of an application's graphical user interface (GUI). The availability of sophisticated GUI development environments and visual component development frameworks is now providing viable platforms for implementing visual programming within general‐purpose platforms, i.e. for the specification of non‐GUI program functionality using visual representations. We describe how specially designed reflective components can be used in an industry‐standard visual programming environment to graphically specify sophisticated data transformation pipelines that interact with GUI elements. The components are based on Unix‐style filters repackaged as ActiveX controls. Their visual layout on the development environment canvas is used to specify the connection topology of the resultant pipeline. The process of converting filter‐style programs into visual controls is automated using a domain‐specific language. We demonstrate the approach through the design and the visual implementation of a GUI‐based spell‐checker. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.