Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ada-uts.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!bbnccv!ada-uts!richw
From: richw@ada-uts.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Graphical Programming Langauges
Message-ID: <15100020@ada-uts.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Dec-85 12:23:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ada-uts.15100020
Posted: Thu Dec 26 12:23:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 00:42:30 EST
References: <9203@ritcv.UUCP>
Lines: 68
Nf-ID: #R:ritcv:-920300:ada-uts:15100020:000:3057
Nf-From: ada-uts!richw    Dec 26 12:23:00 1985


I just finished a M.S. thesis that's sorta related.  I did the work in
Smalltalk-80 and had a great time.  Although I know little about the
Macintosh, I'd strongly recommend considering Smalltalk, if you can
get your hands on a relatively fast implementation.  The Smalltalk
system provides a large number of graphical "primitives"; maybe more (?)
than the Mac.  It's also an object-oriented language, which you may
prefer over C or the like on a Mac.  (I've heard about Smalltalk
implementations on the Mac.)

Anyway, here are a few references that may be of help.  The first is
the only I know of that talks about programming via a graphical
interface:

   "Programming By Rehearsal", William Finzer & Laura Gould,
   Byte, June 1984, pp. 187-210

These talk about uses of graphics in programming environments:

   "Graphical Program Development with PECAN Program Development
   Systems", Steven P. Reiss, Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT / SIGPLAN
   Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development
   Environments, Pittsburgh, PA, April 1984, Software Engineering
   Notes, 9, 3 and SIGPLAN Notices, 19, 5, both May 1984, pp. 30-41.

   "Magpie - An Interactive Programming Environment for Pascal",
   Norman M. Delisle, David E. Menicosy, and Mayer D. Schwartz,
   Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Hawaii International
   Conference on System Sciences, 1985, Bruce D. Shriver (ed.),
   Volume II, pp. 588-595.

These talk about using constraints to specify pictures -- they may
not be of interest, but references are cheap...

   "Juno:  A Constraint-Based Graphics System", Greg Nelson, Computer
   Graphics, 19, 5, July 1985, pp. 235-243.

   "IDEAL User's Manual", Christopher J. Van Wyck, Computer Science
   Technical Report No. 103, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
   07974, Dec. 17, 1981.

The following is a very good thesis that talks about general methods
for displaying arbitrary data structures:

   "Displaying Data Structures for Interactive Debugging", Brad A.
   Myers, CSL-80-7, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA, 1980  (A summary
   of this report appeared as "Incense:  A System for Displaying
   Data Structures", Computer Graphics, 18, 3, July 1983).

Finally, my thesis specifically dealt with "program animation", or the
process of creating dynamic versions of programs which display a
program's actions as they occur.  The last reference is mine;
reply via E-mail for more information or write to:
Rich Wagner, 104 Langdon Ave., Watertown, MA 02172

   "A System for Algorithm Animation", Marc H. Brown and Robert A.
   Sedgewick, Computer Graphics, 18, 3, July 1984, pp. 177-186.

   "Techniques for Algorithm Animation", Marc H. Brown and Robert A.
   Sedgewick, Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Hawaii
   International Conference on System Science, 1985, pp. 104-113.

   "Animating Programs Using Smalltalk", Ralph L. London and
   Robert A. Duisberg, Computer, Vol. 18, No. 8, August 1985,
   pp. 61-71

   "Program Animation Tools and Techniques", Richard M. Wagner,
   MIT S.B./S.M. Thesis, Nov. 1985