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From: David W. McIntyre <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.visual,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: comp.lang.visual Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ)
Followup-To: comp.lang.visual
Date: 24 Jan 2001 17:00:59 -0500
Organization: BlackRock Financial Management Inc.
Lines: 2106
Approved: [email protected] (comp.lang.visual)
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Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently-Asked Questions
(and their answers) about visual programming. It should
be read by anyone who wishes to post to the comp.lang.visual
newsgroup.
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.lang.visual:4071 comp.answers:43979 news.answers:200439

Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1998/03/10
Archive-name: visual-lang/faq
Version: 98.03.10.1

Comp.Lang.Visual - Frequently-Asked Questions List
Most recent update: 10 March 1998

===========================================================================

This article contains a list of frequently-asked questions and
frequently-desired resources for the newsgroup comp.lang.visual. You
should read this faq before you post to this group so that you understand
what it is all about.

This article is posted at least weekly, or more often when changes are
submitted. I encourage everyone to send in their ideas and additions.

This collection of documents is Copyright (C) 1999, David McIntyre. All
rights reserved. Permission to distribute this collection is hereby
granted providing that distribution is electronic, no money is involved,
reasonable attempts are made to use the latest version and all credits
and this copyright notice are maintainted. Other requests for distribution
should be submitted to the editor. All reasonable requests will be
granted.

Many FAQs, including this one, are available on the archive site
rtfm.mit.edu in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers.
The name under which a FAQ is archived appears in the "Archive-Name:"
line at the top of the article. This FAQ is archived as "visual-lang/faq"

===========================================================================

Maintainer: Dr. David McIntyre
BlackRock Financial Management
345 Park Ave
New York, NY 10154 USA

[email protected]

212-409-3574 (office)

===========================================================================

Index:
General:
1) What is comp.lang.visual?
.1) What is moderation, and how does it work?
.2) Why is this newsgroup moderated?
.3) Who is the moderator?
.4) What is the moderation policy?
.5) Is this newsgroup archived?
2) What is a visual (programming) language?
.1) Do we need the word "programming" in that phrase?
.2) Is there a better phrase to use?
3) What about Visual Basic and Visual C++?
4) What are some examples of visual programming languages?
a) Research visual programming languages.
b) Commercial visual programming languages.
5) Information sources:
a) Books.
b) Journals [ including CFP's for special issues ]
c) Conferences proceedings.
d) Upcoming conferences.
e) Info available through ftp.
f) Graduate programs in visual programming.
g) Other newsgroups.
h) WWW pages.

6) Can we talk about VPL's in a newsgroup?

7) VP paper classification project.

Paradigm-specific:
8) What are some references about visual query languages?
9) What are some references for component-based software?

Miscellaneous:
10) Doesn't everyone agree that VL is great?

Technical:
11) Work done in specifying visual language grammar.
12) The Deutsch Limit

Toolkits:
13) Commercially available toolkits to help in VL design.

Calls for Papers:
14) Calls for papers and announcements for upcoming conferences.

References:
References used in this FAQ (in Bibtex/Scribe format).

Acknowledgements

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q1: What is comp.lang.visual?

A1: It is a forum for discussing Visual Programming Languages: their
problems, their advantages, and ideas for making them better.

Visual language discussion can also include aspects of many other
topics, eg, visualization of programs and/or data, human-computer
interaction and interfaces, formal languages.

Visual Basic and Visual C++ are not for the most part visual
programming languages. They are textual languages with a graphical
user interface builder attached. See Q3 for locations where you
can get information about these products.

Commercial postings, with few exceptions, are not acceptable.

Comp.lang.visual is a moderated newsgroup (see the next questions).

Q1.1: How does this moderation stuff work?

A1.1: At the beginning of 1995, comp.lang.visual became an officially
moderated newsgroup. This means that any posting to this group
first gets sent, via email, to the moderator. This is done
invisibly to you; normal news-posting software is used.

If the content of the article is appropriate to the charter of this
group the moderator approves the article, and it is sent back into
the news system, this time to be read by all.

If the content of the article is inappropriate to the charter of
this group, the article is not seen by the news system. Typically,
the moderator replies to the poster, letting them know what was
unacceptable about the rejected posting.

Q1.2: Why is this newsgroup moderated?

A1.2: This newsgroup hummed along steadily for many years without
the need for moderation. When Microsoft released their line of
"visual" products (Visual BASIC, Visual C++, etc.) a myriad of
news-readers saw the word "visual" in the title of this newsgroup
and decided that it was the correct place to ask Visual BASIC
questions, drowning out the conversations about visual programming
languages taking place here already.

The moderation has cleaned this problem up.

Q1.3: Who is the moderator?

A1.3: David McIntyre, who is also the maintainer of this FAQ. Moderation
questions can be addressed to [email protected], or you
can just use the email address at the top of this FAQ.

Q1.4: What is the moderation policy?

A1.4: Any article having any semblance to the charter is accepted without
any editing. Any article having content only related to Visual
BASIC, Visual C++ or anything else non-visual is rejected. Visual
BASIC and Visual C++-related articles are sometimes accepted when
their content is about the visual aspects of the environments.

On rare occasions the moderator may add comments to the bottom of
the article. These are always enclosed in square brackets ([]) and
signed by the moderator.

Q1.5: Is this newsgroup archived?

A1.5: YES! As of the end of summer '95 we are now archived at the
UUNET site ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9 or 192.48.96.9). Use anonymous
ftp to reach the site.

Our directory is /usenet/comp.lang.visual. Two subdirectories hold
the FAQ (but perhaps not as recent a copy as is in rtfm.mit.edu) and
all the posts to this newsgroup since it became moderated. The
archive currently holds the first 263 or so articles. New articles
will be added approximately monthly, depending on traffic volume
and moderator stress level. This directory also contains an index
file (named index) which contains message number, author, date
and title for each article.

The archived articles are stored in a gzip-compressed format. Use
gunzip to decompress when you ftp them home.

[ Unfortunately, I seem to have messed this up, and hopefully we'll
resume this shortly. 1/2/97, Dave ]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q2: What is a Visual Programming Language?

A2: A few representative answers:

(a) Visual Programming (VP) refers to any system that allows the
user to specify a program in two-(or more)-dimensionsional fashion.
[...] conventional textual languages are not considered two
dimensional since the compilers or interpreters process them as
long, one-dimensional streams. [Myers90a]

(b) A Visual Language manipulates visual information or supports visual
interaction, or allows programming with visual expressions. The latter
is taken to be the definition of a visual programming language.
Visual programming languages may be further classified according to the
type and extent of visual expression used, into
icon-based languages, form-based languages and diagram languages.
Visual programming environments provide graphical or iconic elements which
can be manipulated by the user in an interactive way according to some
specific spatial grammar for program construction. [Golin90b]

(c) Visually transformed languages are inherently non-visual
languages but have superimposed visual representations. Naturally
visual languages have an inherent visual expression for which
there is no obvious textual equivalent. [Burnett89]

(d) Visual programming is commonly defined as the use of visual
expressions (such as graphics, drawings, animation or icons) in the
process of programming. These visual expressions may be used in
programming environments as graphical interfaces for textual programming
languages; they may be used to form the syntax of new visual programming
languages leading to new paradigms such as programming by demonstration;
or they may be used in graphical presentations of the behavior or
structure of a program. [McIntyre&Burnett]

(e) A visual language is a set of spatial arrangements of text-graphic
symbols with a semantic interpretation that is used in carrying out
communication actions in the world.

Q2.1: Do we need the word "programming" in that phrase?

A2.1: Perhaps not. People like to point out languages such as Miro and
GIL which are visual specification languages as reasons for saying
visual language instead of visual programming language. I think
of Miro as a language for programming specifications, so I like the
word.

We'll try to avoid using the word "programming" when we don't mean
to exclude non-programming visual languages.

Any comments?

[Fred Lakin says: ]

Sure. The short answer is, it reminds us of all the other visual
languages there are, which should be looked at and learned from.
Keeping the word "programming" in the phrase keeps the computer folk
from becoming visually provincial, which I see as a real danger.

The longer answer is, people have invented and used many visual
languages in the course of history. A fraction of those have
anything to do with computers, and even smaller number represent
programs, and an even smaller number of those represent programs and
can be executed on a computer. Let's say people have been using
visual languages for 10,000 years; and using them for communication
*about* computers for 50, and using them for communication *with*
computers for 30. So you can see how small a percentage of the total
numbers of visual languages we are talking about.

Q2.2: Is there a better phrase (than VPL) that we could use?

A2.2: [Send in your ideas!!!!]

[Fred Lakin's idea:]

I prefer the term "executable graphics" instead of visual programming
languages.

Visual programming language is a misnomer. It either means a
programming language which we can see, which is trivial, or a language
used for programming the behavior of visual things, which is limiting.

Executable Graphics expresses a different orientation toward the
problem domain: graphics which can be executed. [Lakin86]

[Paul Lyons sez:]

I've coined the term "Hyperprogramming" which I think better
summarises the capabilities and support provided by visual
Programming Languages. We argue for VPLs on practical as well
as theoretical basis. The theoretical arguments relate to the
greater expressivity and intuitiveness of diagrammatic
representations of complex relationships. The practical arguments
relate to the availability of sufficient computing power to
support the capture and processing of visually expressed diagrams.
Specifically, we utilise:

processor speed, to let us do it in real time

high-res graphics, to represent complex
diagrammatic notations

mouse input, to create complex diagrammatic notations and

window-based displays, to partition the resulting
diagrams into a manageable size.

It's this last point that's the important one. Partitioning
big programs to make them more manageable is great, but creates
navigational difficulties. These sort of navigational problems
have been addressed, for "ordinary" documents, by hypertext
systems. Now, "ordinary" hypertext documents are tedious to create
because adding all the hyperlinks takes a long time, but there's
no such problem with programs, because it's easy for the entry
support system to generate the hyperlinks automatically, on-the-fly.
As well as providing programmers with simple and consistent navigation
techniques, the hyperlinks can be used to automatically update shared
information between views.

So I think that VPLs, if they aren't already, will achieve partitioning
based on multiple windows, with hyperlinks between the windows
connecting shared items of information. Calling them Hyperprogramming
languages will reflect this situation, and might reduce the subtle
suggestion (inherent in the name VISUAL programming languages)
that these languages should eschew text entirely.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q3: What about Visual Basic and Visual C++?

A3: Visual Basic and the entire Microsoft Visual (tm) family are not,
despite their names, visual programming languages. They are textual
languages which use a graphical gui builder to make programming decent
interfaces easier on the programmer. The user interface portion of
the language is visual, the rest is not.

Because many Visual BASIC users have many questions, and frequently
post them to this newsgroup, we list some alternate resources:

a) comp.lang.basic.visual !!!!

b) VB Online is a bulletin board dedicated to Visual Basic users.
It can be accessed via. 1-216-694-5734 at 9600 baud.
[[email protected] (Haston, Donald Wayne)]

c) comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc
comp.os.ms-windows.apps
comp.os.ms-windows.misc

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q4: What are some examples of visual programming languages?

Language Name Authors Reference(s)

1966:
???? R. Sutherland [Sutherland66]

1968:
Ambit/G and Ambit/L Christensen et.al. [Christensen68]

1969:
GRAIL Ellis et.al. [Ellis69]

1974:
PLAN2D Denert et.al. [Denert74]

1975:
Pygmailion Smith [Smith77]

1980:
Outline Lakin [Lakin80]

1983:
Prograph Pietryzchowski [Piet83]
ML-like VL Cardelli [Cardelli83]

1984:

Pict Glinert [Glinert84]
Programming by Rehearsal Finzer&Gould [Finzer84]

1986:

HI-VISUAL Ichikawa [Ichikawa86a]
[Hirakawa90a]
LabView [LabView]
PC-TILES Glinert&Smith [Glinert86a]
Show & Tell Kimura [Kimura86c]
[Kimura89]
ThingLab Borning [Borning86]
Tinkertoy Edel [Edel86]

1987:
ARK Smith [Smith87]

1988:

C^2 Kopache [Kopache88]
Fabrik Ingalls [Ingalls88]

1989:

SunPICT Glinert&McIntyre [Glinert89]

1990:

Cube Najork [Najork91]
Hypersignal Carlson [Carlson94]
Miro Heydon [Heydon90]
NoPumpG Lewis
Novis Norton [Norton90]

1991:

Agentsheets Repenning [Agentsheets WEB]
Forms/3 Burnett [Burnett92]
Hence 1.4 Beguelin [Beguelin91]
Mondrian Lieberman
Visavis

1992:

ChemTrains Bell [Bell92]
CODE 2.0 Newton [Newton92]
Hyperpascal Lyons [Lyons93]
Iconicode
Vampire McIntyre [McIntyre92b]
Visavis Poswig [Poswig92]
Voice Dialog D.E. Repenning&Summner [Agentsheets WEB]

1993:

MViews Grundy&Hosking [G&H93b]
SPE Grundy&Hosking [G&H93a]
MEANDER Wirtz [Wirtz93]
SPARCL Spratt&Ambler [Spratt93]

1994:

Escalante McWhirter [see faq info]
PhonePro Cypress Research [GACote94]
Vipers Mosconi [not pub yet]
VIPR Citrin&Zorn [see ftp info]
WinPict McIntyre

1995:
LEGOsheets Repenning et al. [Agentsheets WEB]
ViTABal Grundy&Hoskings [Grundy95]

No info yet:

CANTATA
VIVA
AVS
Serius Developer
apE

b) Visual programming languages commercially available today.

** General purpose:

Prograph Pictorius, Inc 800-927-4847
AppWare Novell 800-277-2717
Iconicode IconIcon
Design/CPN Meta Software 617-576-6920
SystemSpecs IvyTeam, Bern Switz.
Layout Objects, Inc 508-777-2800
LabVIEW National Instruments 512-794-0100
VPLus SimPhonics, Inc 813-623-9917
N!Power Signal Technology 805-899-8300 x350
EiffelBuild ISE [email protected]
Sanscript Northwoods Software www.nwoods.com
MultiMedia Logic Softronix www.softronix.com

** Component-based:

Visual AppBuilder Novell 800-453-1267
Capsule Metaphor / IBM 800-426-3333
SynchroWorks Oberon Software, Inc 800-524-5459
Parts Digitalk 800-531-2344
Synergy Prodea Software Corp 800-PRODEA-1
VisualAge IBM 800-426-3333
Eiffel libraries ISE [email protected]

** Multi-media and computer-based training authoring tools:

Authorware Macromedia, Inc 800-945-4061
IconAuthor AimTech Corp 800-289-2884
ForShow Bourbaki, Inc 800-289-1347
HSC InterActive HSC Software 800-566-6699

** Telephony:

PhonePro Cypress Research 408-752-2700
PhoneOne Information Gateway 703-760-0000

** Data aquisition:

LabVIEW National Instruments 512-794-0100
DT VEE (HP VEE reseller) Data Translation, Inc 800-525-8528

** Data analysis and visualization:

Khoros Khoral Research 505-837-6500
AVS Advanced Visual Systems 617-890-4300

** Design & Testing:

Dataflo MP Dynetics, Inc. 800-922-9261
Design/CPN Meta Software 617-576-6920

** DSP Design/Analysis

Hypersignal Hyperception 214-343-8525

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q5: What can I read to learn more about Visual Programming Languages?

A5:

a) Books:

** The most comprehensive collection so far is:

"Visual Programming Environments," E. P. Glinert, editor, 1990.
[Glinert90b][Glinert90c]

** Other well-known books include:

"Visual Languages," Chang, Ichikawa and Ligomenides, editors, 1986.
[Chang86]

"Visual Programming," N. C. Shu, 1988.
[Shu88]

"Principles of Visual Programming Systems," S.-K. Chang, editor, 1990.
[Chang90a]

"Visual Object-Oriented Programming: Concepts and Environments,"
M. Burnett, A. Goldberg and T. Lewis, editors,
Manning / Prentice-Hall, 1994(?).
[Burnett94]

** Component-based software construction:

"Reusable Software: The Base Object-Oriented Component Libraries,"
B. Meyer, Prentice Hall, 1994.

** Language specific books include:

"Cutting Your Test Development Time with HP VEE," Helsel,
HP Professional Books / Prentice Hall, 1994.

"LabVIEW Graphical Programming, Practical Applications in
Instrumentation and Control," Gary W. Johnson, Carl Machover,
series editor, McGraw-Hill, 1994.

"Visual Programming with Prograph CPX," Steinman and Carver,
Manning, 1995 [ ISBN: 0-13-441163-3 ].

** Possibly related books:

"The Design of an Extensible Graph Editor", F. N. Paulisch,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 704,
Springer-Verlag, 1993.

b) Journals:

Journal of Visual Languages and Computing. The JVLC is published
quarterly by the Academic Press, London, phone (outside the UK)
+44-1-81-300-3322, fax +44-1-81-309-0807, ISSN 1045-926X.
Institutional rate is $154/year, personal $70/year.

Editors are S.-K. Chang and S. Levialdi.

Address is:
Journals Marketing Department
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Ltd.
24-28 Oval Road
London NW1 7DX, UK

Journals Promotion Department
Academic Press
1250 Sixth Ave.
San Diego, CA 92101, USA

-------------------

c) Proceedings:

IEEE Workshop/Symposium proceedings have been published since 1986,
but most have gone out of print. The most recent two are still
available, others are probably not.

VL'84, Hiroshima, Japan. IEEE Computer Society Press #612.
VL'86, Dallas, Texas. IEEE Computer Society Press #722.
VL'87, Linkoeping, Sweden.
VL'88, Pittsburgh, PA. IEEE Computer Society Press #876.
VL'89, Rome, Italy. IEEE Computer Society Press #2002.
VL'90, Skokie, Ill. IEEE Computer Society Press #2090.
VL'91, Kobe, Japan. IEEE Computer Society Press #2330.
VL'92, Seattle, Washington. IEEE Computer Press #3090.
VL'93, Bergen, Norway. IEEE Computer Society Press #3970-02.
VL'94, St. Louis, MO. IEEE Computer Society Press #6660-02.
VL'95, Darmstadt, German. IEEE Computer Society Press #.
VL'96, Boulder, CO. IEEE Computer Society Press #.
VL'97, . IEEE Computer Society Press #.

1994's Visual Software Programming Languages Meeting held
in Scottsdale, Arizona will probably never produce a proceedings,
which is really too bad.

Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI) :

1992 International Workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI '92),
Rome, May, 1992. Published as Advanced Visual Interfaces, T. Catarci,
M. F. Costabile, and S. Levialdi, eds., World Scientific Series in
Computer Science, vol. 36, Singapore: World Scientific Press, 1992.

1994 International Workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI '94),
Bari, Italy, May, 1994. Proceedings published by ACM Press.

d) Upcoming Conferences:

VL '98, September 1-4, 1998, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

WWW:
http://www.cs.dal.ca/~smedley/vl98/

e) FTP-able information.

** The POLKA program visualization system, including documentation,
and the Gthreads view library:
site: ftp.cc.gatech.edu
dir : pub/people/stasko
file: polka.tar.Z
gthread.Animations.tar.Z
gthread.KSRtracing.tar.Z

** A technical report describing the NL visual language is available
from:
site: probitas.cs.utas.edu.au (131.217.20.5)
dir : pub/TR
file: R93-11.ps.Z

[ this file appears to be renamed as TR93-11.ps.Z ]

** Executables for ChemTrains and NoPumpGII:
site: ftp.cs.colorado.edu
dir : pub/cs/distribs/clewis/NATP

** Annotated Bibliography on Graph Drawing Algorithms
site: wilma.cs.brown.edu (128.148.33.66)
dir : /pub
file: gdbiblio.tex.Z and gdbiblio.ps.Z

** Prograph source archives
site: ftp.iup.edu
dir : info-prograph

** Papers, user manuals and Sun 4 binaries for CODE 2.0
site: pompadour.csres.utexas.edu
dir : ParProg/code2

site: ftp.cs.utexas.edu
dir : pub/techreports

** Source, manuals and papers for HeNCE 1.4
site: netlib2.cs.utk.edu
dir : hence

or through xnetlib

** Escalanate source/binaries & users' guide
site: cs.colorado.edu
dir : /pub/distribs/escalante
file: README

** LabVIEW ftp sites
site: ftp.natinst.com
dir : support/labview

site: ftp.pica.army.mil
dir : pub/labview

*** GIL papers and GIL toolkit, including theorem prover
site: ftp.cs.ucsb.edu
dir : /pub/gil/papers
file: README

dir : /pub/gil
file: [toolkit]

** HyperPascal papers
site: smee.massey.ac.nz (130.123.96.9)
dir : plyons
file: PICSIL.ps, PICSIL.st (stuffit compressed Word file)
file: hyperpas.ps, hyperpas.st

** [G&H93a] and [G&H93b]
site: ftp.cs.waikato.ac.nz
dir : /ftp/pub/papers/postscript/
file: mviews, spe

** VIPR papers
site: ftp.cs.colorado.edu
dir : /pub/techreports/{citrin/zorn}/
file: CU-CS-672-93.ps.Z ([CITRIN93a])
CU-CS-673-93.ps.Z ([CITRIN93b])
VOOP-VIPR.ps.Z ([CITRIN94])

** Hypersignal paper [Carlson94]
send email to [email protected].

f) Graduate programs that include visual programming.

[ send a blurb about profs, languages, courses at your
favorite grad school to me so I can include it here!!! ]

### George Mason University:

GRADUATE PROGRAMS AT GMU: Degree programs available include the
M.A. or M.F.A. in Visual Information Technology in the College of
Arts & Sciences (centering on computer imaging and animation in
electronic and digital media technology), the M.Ed. and Ph.D. in
Instructional Technology (Graduate School of Education), or the M.S.
and Ph.D. in computer science or computational statistics
(School of Information Technology & Engineering).

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Chris Dede
Graduate School of Education
George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
[email protected]

ASSISTANTSHIPS:
Research Assistantship for Virtual Reality

### Waikato University, New Zealand

We are currently conducting research into software development
environments which support integrated visual and textual programming
(i.e. being able to specify a program using both techniques with full
bi-directional consistency management). Included in this is support
for collaborative visual (& textual) programming, version control
and configuration management for visual (& textual) programs, and
flexible user interface specification and generation. We are building
both an environment which supports these facilities and an environment
generator/OO framework for more easily constructing such systems.
This work is a follow on to our earlier SPE/MViews research.

CONTACT POINT:
Dr John Grundy
Department of Computer Science
University of Waikato
Private Bag 3105
Hamilton
New Zealand
[email protected]

### Auckland University, New Zealand

CONTACT POINT:
Dr John Hosking
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
Private Bag
Auckland
New Zealand
[email protected]

### Massey University, New Zealand

I'm currently running a small research program at Massey University,
in New Zealand (that's in the South Pacific) investigating the
implications of applying hypertechniques to visual programming
languages. The vehicle for this research is a language called
HyperPascal, implemented in Prolog with extensions to support
object-orientation, and mutual real-time updating of
multiple-window systems. Contact me ([email protected]) for more
information about possible projects at Masterate, Doctoral or
Post-doctoral levels.

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Paul Lyons
Computer Science Department
Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Palmerston North
New Zealand
[email protected]

### Oregon State University

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Margaret Burnett
[email protected]

### University of Washington

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Steven Tanimoto
Dr. Alan Borning

### University of Kansas

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Allen Ambler

### University of Pittsburgh

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. S.-K. Chang

### Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Ephraim P. Glinert
[email protected]

### University of Colorado

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Wayne Citrin
[email protected]

### University of Colorado, Center for LifeLong Learning & Design

The Center for LifeLong Learning & Design is creating tools and theoretical
frameworks to support learners of all ages in the general context of design
activities. Many of these tools are domain-oriented visual programming
languages. The center offers course/degress through the University of
Colorado computer science department and the Institute of Cognitive Science.
We also work with the department of environmental design and fine art.
Industrial affiliates include: Apple Computer Inc, NYNEX, and US WEST.

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Alexander Repenning
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/

### New Mexico State University

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Joseph Pfeiffer
[email protected]

### MIT Visible Languages Lab

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Henry Lieberman

### Carnegie Mellon University

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Brad Myers
[email protected]

### Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

We are working on visual language aspects that support parallel
program development, and program visualization techniques that
assist parallel program debugging and performance tuning. We
currently focus on message-passing programming systems.

CONTACT POINT:
Dr. Kang Zhang
Department of Computing
Macquarie University
Sydney, NSW 2109
Australia
[email protected]

g) Other newsgroups.

The newsgroup comp.lang.prograph was recently voted into
existence and should soon appear at a newserver near you.
Prograph is a commercially available visual programming
language, originally for Macs, but soon to be available on
a variety of platforms.

Comp.soft-sys.khoros discusses various aspects of the Khoros
integrated software development environment for information
processing and visualization. Khoros includes the visual
programming language Cantata.

There is a mailing list for LabVIEW. To subscribe, send
a message to: [email protected].

There is a mailing list for Novell's AppWare project, which
now includes Serius Developer. To subscribe, send a message
with the contents "subscribe appware-info" to
[email protected].

Adeva is the AppWare developers association. (See WWW pages).

h) WWW pages:

# This FAQ in WWW/html format:

http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/computing/visual.shtml
[ by Dan Liberte, [email protected] ]

# VL'97 conference home page:

http://www.unisa.it/vl97/vl97.html

# VL'96 conference home page:

http://soglio.colorado.edu/Web/vl96.html

# VL'95 conference home page:

http://www.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de/vl95/

# The VPL Classification project

http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vpl.html
[ by Benjamin Summers, [email protected],
and Margaret Burnett, [email protected] ]

# Bertrand Ibrahim

http://cuiwww.unige.ch/eao/www/Visual/Visual.Programming.biblio.html
[ All sorts of references to various VL/VP resources. ]

http://cuiwww.unige.ch/eao/www/readme.html
http://cuiwww.unige.ch/eao/www/VP.group.intro.e.html
http://cuiwww.unige.ch/eao/www/CBL.papers/CBL.group.intro.e.html
[ ref: Bertrand Ibrahim, [email protected] ]

# Garnet home page

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project
/garnet/www/garnet-home.html
[ all on one line, of course ]
[ ref: Brad A. Myers, [email protected] ]

# Software visualization and animation system at Univ. of Exeter

http://www.dcs.exeter.ac.uk/reports/reports.html#Multi-Media

[ ref: Lindsey Ford ]

# PROGRES

ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/reports/1994/94-11.ps.gz

# Self system

http://self.sunlabs.com/

# Index of HCI-related material in the Web

http://is.twi.tudelft.nl/hci/
[ ref: Hans de Graaff [email protected] ]

# Kent Wittenburg's home page, which contains some info about
relational languages, multimedia parsing, etc. Also a pointer
to Louis Weitzman's home page:

http://www.caiwireless.net/~witsend/kentw

Relational grammars:

http://www.caiwireless.net/~witsend/relational-grammars-home.html

[ ref: Kent Wittenburg [email protected] ]

# Marc Najork's PhD thesis on Cube, a 3-D visual programming lanuage

http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Marc_Najork/thesis/
index.html

# Prograph related pages

comp.lang.prograph FAQ:
http://msor0.ex.ac.uk/PrographFAQ.html

Misc. stuff including screen shots of Prograph code:
http://msor0.ex.ac.uk/Prograph_Talk/StartTalk.html

Pictorius Web page, includes Prograph info.
http://www.pictorius.com

# Various software visualization projects, systems and reports:
[ John Stasko, [email protected]]

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/softviz/SoftViz.html

# Alex Repenning's / Agentsheet
[ Alex Repenning ]

Agentsheets is a programming substrate to create domain-oriented visual
progrmaming languages and simulation environments. Web page refers
to :
- papers
- LEGOsheets : programming environment for LEGO
- Agentsheets Remote Exploratorium
- Child's play workshop notes

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/

# Wayne Citrin's homepage
[ Wayne Citrin ]

http://soglio.colorado.edu/

# MEANDER homepage
[ Guido Wirtz ]

http://www.informatik.uni-siegen.de/~guido/papers/meander.html

# Karl Lieberherr's adaptive software systems
[ Salil Pradhan ]

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter

# Visual programming book nook

http://www.sirius.com/~freedom/BBC/VisualNookPage.html

# Browser's Book Corner
[ Marjan Bace]

http://www.browsebooks.com

# EiffelBuild visual tool page

http://www.eiffel.com

# Novell's AppWare home page

http://netwire.novell.com/home/appware

# Adeva (AppWare developers' association) page:
[ Mark Sulzen ]

http://www.adeva.org

# CODE (visual parallel programming environment) page

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/code

# DV-Centro programming environment

http://www.dvcorp.com/centro.html

# John Grundy's home page; misc VL info and many papers

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~jgrundy/

# Forms/3 page

http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/Forms3/forms3.html

# Signal Technology N!Power

http://www.silcom.com/~stilarry

# AVI'96 pages

http://disparc10.dis.uniromal.it:80/AVI96/info.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q6: How do you talk about Visual Programming Languages in an ASCII
medium (i.e., USENET)?

A6: NEW FAQ ANSWER:

Multiple-sided answers are needed for this question.

When the VSPLM/Arizona proceedings become available, I'll include some
of that here.

OLD FAQ ANSWER:

Good question. Debate over this one continues. Some people on
comp.lang.visual suggest that it can be done, citing film criticism as
a textual medium talking about a decidedly non-textual medium. Others
say that, sure, you can criticize a released film, but how can you
talk about a film no one has seen (and by extension, a VPL no one has
made programs with)?

Brook Conner ([email protected]) tends to go with the first team (that
meaningful discussion can take place). Textual criticism will not
replace actual experience. However, it can still be valuable.
After all, text is fundamentally a form of communication, just like
movies, animation, hypermedia, and that old standby, speech. The
fact that there are some things text does not do well is probably
why many of us are interested in VPLs in the first place, but I
don't think anyone on this group would say "Text is useless."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q7: VP paper classification project.

A7: We have developed a classification scheme for classifying visual
programming language research papers. As part of this work,
we compiled a bibliography of papers classified by their
_original authors_ according to this scheme. This bibliography
is now available on the World Wide Web at:

http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vpl.html

If there are research papers you've written that you'd like to have
added to the bibliography, pick up a copy of the report and send us
a list of your papers classified according to the classification
scheme described in the report. We'll update the bibliography from
time to time. Please include the phrase VPLclassification in your
email header.

Margaret Burnett
Oregon State University
[email protected]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q8: What are some references about visual query languages?

A8: Thom Gillespie's dissertation is titled "VisualMelvyl, a prototype
model of a visual interface for an online public access catalog." It
includes all the reasoning and every visual element in the interface,
hundreds of pictures. Available through UMI as order number 9228661.

I'd also suggest looking at Scott Kim's diss from Stanford on
the Visual Computer. He's a graphic artist who did his dissertation
with Knuth, very interesting. [Note, at least some readers think
that Kim's work has very little, if any, to do with this topic. -DM]

There are a number of visual query language ideas that are not
diagrammatic, which may be more helpful to you than the diagrammatic
ones. Have you looked in the annual proceedings of the Visual Language
Workshops? (title: 19?? IEEE Workshop on Visual Languages). For
example, there's an interesting paper in the 1992 proceedings by
Del Bimbo et al. in which the query is basically a simplified picture
of the desired results. A longer version of that paper appeared in
the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 3(3), Sept. 1992.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q9: What are some references for component-based software?

A9: Is anyone familiar with the idea of component based software construction?

Look at Parts, from Digitalk. It is commercial example of what you are
talking about.

A couple of books related to the idea were pointed out, such as
Grady Booch's "Software Components with Ada". Along the same line
is the book "A Systematic Catalogue of Reusable Abstract Data Types"
by Jurgen Uhl and Hans Albrecht Schmid (Springer-Verlag,
ISBN 0-387-53229-3). Other components libraries can be found in
Smalltalk, Gnu G++, the NIH C++ class library. Commercial sources
include Digitalk, ParcPlace and Mediashare.

Papers on the subject suggested by others include:

Stovsky, MP, and Weide, BW, "Building Interprocess Communication Models
Using STILE," in _Visual Programming Envinroments: Paradigms and
Systems_, EP Glinert, ed., IEEE Press, 1990, 566-574.

David C. Smith, Joshua Susser (1992) A Component Architecture
for Personal Computer Software. In Brad A. Myers (ed.) Languages
for Developing User Interfaces. Jones and Bartlett, Boston, pp:
31-56.

Graphical Toolkit Approach to User Interaction Description
Kosuke Tatsukawa
Proc CHI'91 (ACM) ISBN 0-201-51278-5
pp 322-328

** Mike McMahon of Oberon has the following to say:

Now, with component assembly, you have to ask where the components
come from. Often as not, textual programming is needed to produce
non-GUI and/or non-database components. Whether this programming is
done only by the supplier, by ISVs, in the same company as the
customer, or by the actual user of the visual programming language
varies, and depends more on the marketing strategy of the product than
the capabilities of the visual system. Somewhat arbitrarily, I think
one could draw the line by saying that a tool qualifies as a visual
programming language if it is possible to build some application
without textual programming. This means that the components available
(from whereever) are reusable enough and the visual part powerful
enough. Again arbitrarily, this excludes tools where some part of any
conceivable application would be textual, such as NeXT Interface
Builder or Lotus Notes ViP Visual Links, even though these tools allow
some visual specification of the application control structure in
addition to just the GUI.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q10: Doesn't everyone agree that VL is great?

A10: Heck, no! In fact, some pretty well-respected people have nothing
but contempt for the visual representation of software. In a very
famous article [Brooks87] Fred Brooks says this:

A favorite subject for PhD dissertations in software
engineering is graphical, or visual, programming - the
application of computer graphics to software design....
Nothing even convincing, much less exciting, has yet
emerged from such efforts. I am persuaded that nothing will.

Of course, Brooks' arguments contain several weaknesses:

1) He focuses on flowchart-based control-flow diagrams.

2) He is worried about screen size in pixels. Phil Cox has
presented a strong argument why this may not be meaningful.

3) I think he misunderstands the power of multiple views - not
superimposed views.

-------------

Another anti-vl quote:

...beware the claims of visual programming. Drawing
lines between objects becomes bafflingly web-like.
Purely visual programming is not yet and may never be
viable. [OBrien93]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q11: What work has been done in specifying visual language grammars?

A11: Much work has been done. Here are some references broken down into
the style of grammar used...

* Parsing pictures with text:

[Helm91a]

[Wittenburg91]

[Golin90, Golin91c]

[Lakin86]

* Visual Grammars: This work focuses on using non-textual grammars
to specify the behavior of a language or system.

ChemTrains: [Bell93, Bell91]

Vampire: [McIntyre92b, McIntyre92c]

BITPICT: [Furnas91]

Visual Grammar Notation: [Lakin87]

* Combination: This work combines graphical productions with textual
productions.

[StDenis90]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q12: What is the Deutsch Limit?

A12: A term made up by Fred Lakin describing a comment Peter Deutsch
made at a VL talk by Scott Kim and Warren Robinett about a visual
machine language they had invented.

Deutsch said something like:

"Well, this is all fine and well, but the problem with visual
programming languages is that you can't have more than 50 visual
primitives on the screen at the same time. How are you going to
write an operating system?"

This points out the obvious density advantage of text. This barrier
has become known as the "Deutsch Limit," stated as:

The problem with visual programming is that you can't have more
than 50 visual primitives on the screen at the same time.

[ Above by Fred Lakin, below by Dave McIntyre ]

This is clearly a problem with visual representations. However, it
is not immediately clear to me that a similar limit does not also
exist in textual languages.

When textually programming I frequently use an Emacs window with
about 50 lines of text on my 19" monitor. Anyone older than about
35 complains that they cannot read the text because the font is
too small. I use a lot of whitespace in my programs, so we might
assume that the 50 lines in the editor contain 40 meaningful line.
Most common programming styles dictate limiting the number of
"primitives" or statements to one or two per line, giving my
textual screen at most 80 primitives.

Any comments?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q13: What commercially available toolkits could help in VL programming?

A13: [Note: these sections contain blurbs from ads...I'm not writing this]

1) Tom Sawyer's Graph Layout Toolkit.

Tom Sawyer's Graph Layout Toolkit is a family of portable libraries
that deliver an immediate face-lift to graphics applications with
its sophisticated layout algorithms.

[Seems to include several different layout algorithms for different
style networks.]

info from: [email protected] / 510-848-0853 / Berkeley, CA

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q14: Calls for Papers

IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - September 1-4, 1998
Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society

VL '98 is the premiere international conference on visual computer
languages. The aim of this symposium is to bring together researchers and
industrial professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds to present and
discuss their ongoing work on visual communication with computers. We are
interested in visual computer languages in the broad sense of the term,
ranging from high-level graphical tools for programming professionals, to
graphical database query languages, to languages for children to create
simulation environments. In past years attendees have come from a wide
variety of backgrounds, including human-computer interaction, programming
languages theory and practice, psychology of programmers, computer-aided
design, multimedia, database systems, geographical information systems,
software engineering, and computer science education. We also draw
participants from both industry and academia, including students as well as
professionals. This year we are particularly interested in increasing
attendance from the human psychology community, including human computer
interaction, empirical studies (qualitative as well as quantitative),
psychology of programmers, and related fields. The technical program will
include research and practice papers, posters, panels, keynote addresses by
distinguished speakers, and special events.

Submissions

Papers can be original research papers (maximum 8 pages ), original
application/case studies (maximum 6 pages), or poster papers (maximum 2
pages) in IEEE two-column proceeding format. Authors must identify the
paper's category. In addition we are interested in tutorial proposals and
live demonstrations. Original research papers should make clear what new
contribution the work makes to visual languages, and how it differs from
related works; original case study/application papers should describe the
use of one or more VLs in the real world. Such papers are especially
encouraged if they report on ways to use VLs or applications of VLs that
have not been reported before. Poster papers are most suitable for
interactive discussion.

Deadlines

Abstracts: February 27, 1998

All authors intending to submit a paper must submit, by e-mail, a 150 word
abstract of the paper. These will not be reviewed, but will be used to
select reviewers, and thus are essential to enable us to have the papers
reviewed in a timely manner.

Papers: March 13, 1998

All papers will be submitted electronically, in postscript format. Details
of electronic submission will be made available shortly.

Notification to authors of acceptance: May 1, 1998
Final camera-ready manuscript: July 3, 1998

Technical Committee

General Chair: Genny Tortora, Italy
Program Co-Chairs: David McIntyre, USA
Trevor Smedley, Canada
Tutorials Chair: Joe Pfeiffer, US

Steering Committee:

S.K. Chang, USA
Allen Ambler, USA
Tadao Ichikawa, Italy
Erland Jungert, Sweden
Robert Korfhage, USA
Stefano Levialdi, Italy
Steven Tanimoto, USA

Program Committee:

Meera Blattner, USA
Margaret Burnett, USA
Wayne Citrin, USA
Francesca Costabile, Italy
Philip T. Cox, Canada
Isabel Cruz, USA
Alberto Del Bimbo, Italy
Stephen Eick, USA
Ephraim Glinert, USA
Thomas Green, United Kingdom
John C. Grundy, New Zealand
Volker Haarslev, Germany
Masahito Hirakawa, Japan
H.J. Hoffmann, Germany
Chris Holt, United Kingdom
John Hosking, New Zealand
Dan Kimura, USA
Kim Marriott, Australia
Satoshi Matsuoka, Japan
Paul Mulholland, United Kingdom
Piero Mussio, Italy
Marc Najork, USA
Alex Repenning, USA
Andy Schuerr, Germany
John Stasko, USA
Susan M. Uskudarli, USA
Susan Weidenbeck, USA
Kang Zhang, Australia

For further information, contact:
Dr. Trevor Smedley, Dalhousie University,
Faculty of Computer Science, PO Box 1000,
Halifax, NS, Canada, B3J 2X4
e-mail: [email protected]
Fax: 1-902-492-1517

Or visit the website: http://www.cs.dal.ca/~smedley/vl98

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

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String definitions used in the above references:

@string{ieeec = "IEEE Computer"}
@string{jvlc = "J. Visual Languages and Computing"}
@string{ieeese = "IEEE Trans. Software Engineering"}
@string{ieees = "IEEE Software"}
@string{ieeecga = "IEEE CG \& A"}
@string{hci = "Human Computer Interaction"}
@string{toplas = "ACM Trans. Programming Languages and Systems"}
@string{vl84 = "Proc. 1984 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl86 = "Proc. 1986 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl87 = "Proc. 1987 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl88 = "Proc. 1988 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl89 = "Proc. 1989 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl90 = "Proc. 1990 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl91 = "Proc. 1991 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl92 = "Proc. 1992 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages"}
@string{vl93 = "Proc. 1993 IEEE Symposium Visual Languages"}
@string{vl94 = "Proc. 1994 IEEE Symposium Visual Languages"}
@string{vl95 = "Proc. 1995 IEEE Symposium Visual Languages"}
@string{vl96 = "Proc. 1996 IEEE Symposium Visual Languages"}
@string{cacm = "Commun. ACM"}
@string{byte = "BYTE"}
@string{oopsla88 = "Proc. OOPSLA '88"}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acknowledgements:

This work has been significantly enhanced through input from:

Margaret Burnett [email protected]
Nick Wilde [email protected]
Brendan Madden [email protected]
Ron Dolin [email protected]
Fred Lakin [email protected]
Michael Bell [email protected]
John Morris [email protected]
Wayne Citrin [email protected]
Kent Wittenburg [email protected]
Marc Brown [email protected]
Marc Najork [email protected]
Brigham Bell [email protected]
Peter Newton [email protected]
Makoto Murata [email protected]
Brian Powell [email protected]
John Grundy [email protected]
Dan Liberte [email protected]
Bertrand Ibrahim [email protected]
Nicholas Tarnoff [email protected]
Stefan Pantke [email protected]
Bernd Gruendling [email protected]
John Garden [email protected]
Jutta Degener [email protected]
Mike McMahon [email protected]
Greg McKaskle [email protected]
Guido Wirtz [email protected]
Salil Pradhan [email protected]
Larry Pfeifer [email protected]
Eric Jacopin [email protected]
Bertrand Meyer [email protected]
Mark Sulzen [email protected]
Emery Berger [email protected]
Alex Repenning [email protected]
Dave Clark [email protected]
Marjan Bace [email protected]
Brian Carlson [email protected]
Paula Minnikin [email protected]
Bay-Wei Chang [email protected]

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David McIntyre [email protected] 212-409-3574