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Attribute grammars in constraint‐based graphics systems
Author(s) -
Barford Lee Alton,
Vander Zanden Bradley T.
Publication year - 1989
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.4380190402
Subject(s) - rule based machine translation , constraint (computer aided design) , computer science , graphics , l attributed grammar , scalable vector graphics , programming language , computer graphics , theoretical computer science , context free grammar , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , computer graphics (images) , mathematics , world wide web , geometry
A constraint‐based graphics system provides a flexible, intuitive framework for describing relationships among graphical objects in applications such as document preparation, fount design and solid modelling. This paper describes two constraint‐based graphics systems, micro‐COSM and the IDEAL Synthesizer, and their implementation in terms of attribute grammars. Our experiences with attribute grammars suggest that they provide a powerful framework for representing constraints and extracting important semantic information such as the equations to be solved by the constraint solver. We discuss the advantages of using attribute grammars in constraint‐based graphics and from our experiences make several observations about the way attribute grammars should be used.