The kernel of a software development environment for graphic languages

The innovative graphic features of the kernel of the integrated software development environment GRASPIN are discussed. GRASPIN extends to the graphic languages used in the early stages of software life cycle the benefits of the software development environment approach, in that it provides a graphlike internal representation of software documents and automatic layout tools. Standard techniques based on the abstract syntax tree are extended with links and attributes, which decorate internal representations, to describe the context-sensitive aspects of graphic languages. The consistency of graphic documents is maintained through the kernel syntactic primitives to provide context-free checks, while action routines are introduced to perform semantic and context-sensitive checks. The automatic layout produces aesthetic and pleasing layouts of documents