Tabular Expression Editor

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 that provides 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. The tool will be built using an existing XML editor kit, possibly with some extensions. Some main goals in developing these tools will be ease of extension and portability across diverse operating and development platforms.

Last modified: Wed 2001.07.18 at 11:19 NDT by Dennis Peters