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The Design and Specification of a Visual Language: An Example for Customising Geographic Information Systems Functionalities
Author(s) -
Paterna' F.,
Campari I.,
Scopigno R.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
computer graphics forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1467-8659
pISSN - 0167-7055
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8659.1340199
Subject(s) - computer science , human–computer interaction , frame (networking) , rule based machine translation , geographic information system , visual modeling , information flow , user interface , task (project management) , information system , programming language , software , software engineering , unified modeling language , artificial intelligence , systems engineering , telecommunications , linguistics , philosophy , remote sensing , electrical engineering , engineering , geology
In this paper the design of a visual program editor and its specification using formal grammars are discussed. We consider an environment to specify, analyse and execute visual programs for a Geographical Information System (GIS). The lack of sophisticated user interfaces is one of the major drawbacks to Geographical Information Systems, particularly for people without a sound background in computer science. The use of a visual language approach is useful in order to hide the plethora of basic GIS functions, while providing ready‐ to‐use tools to solve users' tasks. The visual environment provides users with higher level interfaces; it is based on the module concept, which is conceived as a software building block that implements a solution to a general basic task and is presented to the user through an interactive frame. Complex GIS queries can be carried out by interconnecting modules into flow networks, using a direct manipulation approach.