Animation automatically generated from simulation specifications

Our generator framework DEVIL supports the development of visual languages. It generates complete language implementations from high-level specifications including advanced graphical structure editors. It has been successfully used for a wide range of domain specific visual languages. For a DSL that has an execution semantics, e.g. a processor specification language, it is desirable to simulate and to visualize program execution for purposes of analysis or evaluation. This paper shows how DEViL is extended to generate a simulator for a visual language from specification of its state transition model. Without the need of any further specification a smooth animation of program execution using a technique of graphical interpolation is generated automatically. Further advanced animations can easily be obtained by simply associating some "animated visual patterns" to standardized operations of the simulator. DEViL provides a large variety of such patterns which encapsulate the implementation of certain useful animation effects. Our approach has proven to be effective for the animation of several DSLs.