A programmable editor for developing structured documents based on bidirectional transformations

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a novel editor supporting interactive refinement in the development of structured documents. The user performs a sequence of editing operations on the document view, and the editor automatically derives an efficient and reliable document source and a transformation that produces the document view. The editor is unique in its programmability, in the sense that the transformation can be obtained through editing operations. The main tricks behind are the utilization of the view-updating technique developed in the database community, and a new bidirectional transformation language that cannot only describe the relationship between the document source and its view, but also data dependency in the view.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.1 Applicative (Functional) Programming

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.2 Automatic Programming

  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Spreadsheets; Word processing

General Terms:
Documentation, Languages

Keywords:
bidirectional transformation, document engineering, editor, functional programming, view updating