The Pan language-based editing system

ABSTRACT

Powerful editing systems for developing complex software documents are difficult to engineer. Besides requiring efficient incremental algorithms and complex data structures, such editors must accommodate flexible editing styles, provide a consistent, coherent, and powerful user interface, support individual variations and projectwide configurations, maintain a sharable database of information concerning the documents being edited, and integrate smoothly with the other tools in the environment. Pan is a language-based editing and browsing system that exhibits these characteristics. This paper surveys the design and engineering of Pan, paying particular attention to a number of issues that pervade the system: incremental checking and analysis, information retention in the presence of change, tolerance for errors and anomalies, and extension facilities.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.3 Coding Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Program editors

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors, Languages

Keywords:
Ladle, Pan, coherent user interfaces, colander, contextual constraint, extension facilities, grammatical abstraction, interactive programming environment, logic programming, logical constraint grammar, reason maintenance, syntax-recognizing editor, tolerance for errors and anomalies