Method and system for generating and displaying a computer program
First Claim
1. A method in a computer system for specifying a computer program, the computer program being represented by a program tree, the program tree being a tree data structure having nodes, each node representing a computational construct of the computer program, the method comprising:
- initializing the program tree to contain a root node representing a computational construct that contains all other computational constructs of the computer program; and
repeating the following until all computational constructs of the computer program are represented by nodes contained in the program tree,displaying a representation of the computer program represented by the nodes currently contained in the program tree by, for each of the nodes currently contained in the program tree, selecting the computational construct represented by the node, and displaying to a user a representation of the selected computational construct;
receiving from the user an indication of an insertion point relative to the displayed representations of the computational constructs, the insertion point indicating a position within the program tree;
receiving from the user an identification of a computational construct to be added to the computer program; and
in response to receiving the identification of the computational construct, creating a node that represents the identified computational construct and adding the node to the program tree at the insertion point indicated by the userwhereby the program tree contains a specification of the computer program.
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Abstract
A method and system for generating a computer program. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention provides a program tree editor for directly manipulating a program tree. A program tree comprises of plurality of nodes corresponding to computational constructs. The program tree editor receives commands from a user that are independent of a programming language syntax. The present invention also provides a display representation generator for generating a display representation of the program tree. The display representation generator retrieves nodes from the program tree and displays a display representation of the node. A user of the present invention preferably interacts with the program tree editor based on the display representation.
78 Citations
15 Claims
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1. A method in a computer system for specifying a computer program, the computer program being represented by a program tree, the program tree being a tree data structure having nodes, each node representing a computational construct of the computer program, the method comprising:
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initializing the program tree to contain a root node representing a computational construct that contains all other computational constructs of the computer program; and repeating the following until all computational constructs of the computer program are represented by nodes contained in the program tree, displaying a representation of the computer program represented by the nodes currently contained in the program tree by, for each of the nodes currently contained in the program tree, selecting the computational construct represented by the node, and displaying to a user a representation of the selected computational construct; receiving from the user an indication of an insertion point relative to the displayed representations of the computational constructs, the insertion point indicating a position within the program tree; receiving from the user an identification of a computational construct to be added to the computer program; and in response to receiving the identification of the computational construct, creating a node that represents the identified computational construct and adding the node to the program tree at the insertion point indicated by the user whereby the program tree contains a specification of the computer program. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A method in a computer program for displaying a computer program in a variety of representational formats, the computer program being represented by a program tree, the program tree being a tree data structure having nodes, each node representing a computational construct of the computer program, the method comprising:
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for each of a plurality of representational formats, receiving from a user an indication of the representational format; and for each of the nodes currently contained in the program tree, selecting the computational construct represented by the node; and displaying to the user a representation of the selected computational construct in the indicated representational format whereby the user can selectively display the computer program in each of the plurality representational formats. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A method in a computer system for specifying a computer program by direct manipulation of a program tree, the computer program being specified without using a programming language that has a grammar so that parsing of statements of the programming language according to the grammar is avoided, the method comprising:
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receiving from a user data representing a plurality of nodes of a program tree representing the computer program and an indication of a position within the program tree for each node, the received data representing operation and operands that comprise the computer program; storing the received data representing the plurality of nodes within a program tree data structure of the computer system at the indicated positions within the program tree, the nodes of the program tree data structure forming a tree data structure containing the specification of the computer program; generating a display representation of the computer program in a display representational format from the data stored in the program tree data structure; and displaying the generated display representation on a display device of the computer system. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15)
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Specification