A knowledge-based design environment for graphical network editors

A graphical editor design environment that incorporates and applies knowledge about application domains has been developed. The goal is to move a design environment closer toward its application. As an example of this generation of design support systems, a design environment for graphical editors in the domain of object-oriented inheritance networks is presented. In addition to the general knowledge about graphs, the system knows about inheritance mechanisms in object-oriented systems, and it knows about the nodes being classes and the links representing the superclass relation. This knowledge is used to provide guidance, critiques, and constraints