Tabular Expression Editor

Supervisor: Dennis Peters
Student: available

Tabular expressions have been shown to be useful for presenting formal computer system documentation in a concise and readable manner. Unfortunately, however, most traditional documentation tools (e.g., word-processors) require the user to concentrate on both the content and the format of the expressions simultaneously, which complicates the task and increases the likelyhood of errors. Also these tools do not lend themselves to formal analysis of the documentation.

The goal of this project is to produce a tool in at least two distinct modules:

  1. Tabular Expression Kernel: This is the foundation on which other tools will be constructed. It will permit abstract manipulation of tabular expressions, including storage and retrieval from disk (possibly in an extensible notation such as XML).
  2. Tabular Expression Editor Tool: This tool will provide a user-friendly interface to permit users to enter and edit tabular expressions. The tool will allow the user to concentrate on the contents of the expressions without concern for the presentation details. This tool will enforce adherence to structural rules (e.g., number of operands) and possibly limited type correctness.
Some main goals in developing these tools will be ease of extension and portability across diverse operating and development platforms.


Back to Dennis Peters 8800 page

Last modified: Thu 2000.11.02 at 15:21 NST by Dennis Peters