JPH05233258A - Development support system for graphic editor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable the operation definition of a more abstracted graphic editor by automatically forming a source code chip for a program including a call of a graphic library capable of realizing a defined editing function. CONSTITUTION:This system itself is realized as one of graphic editors and constituted of a graphic definition tool 21 for forming a graphic definition diagram and an operation definition tool 22 for forming an operation definition diagram. Respective tools 21, 22 prepare a function for storing defined contents as information and a function for writing the information in a file or reading it from the file. The system is also provided with a code formation subsystem 23 for automatically forming a source code of a program from the defined information. Graphics to be edited are defined by the tool 21 and status transition expressing operation is defined by the tool 22 as a visual status transition diagram and the source code of the program is automatically generated from the information previously defined by the subsystem 23.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention develops a software tool (hereinafter referred to as a graphic editor) for creating and editing an arbitrary figure or picture composed of various figures on a display screen using a computer. It is related to the technology for doing.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Graphic editors have a purpose to simply draw a picture, and a graphic editor to edit a chart having a higher meaning to support a certain phase of software development. There are various types, and new graphic editors are frequently developed in the future.

[0003]

FIG. 10 shows the internal structure of the graphic editor. In the conventional development of graphic editors, it was necessary to use graphics libraries that can be divided into several levels and call those libraries from within the programming language, but the usage of calling the libraries is complicated. However, there is a problem that it takes time to learn it. Meanwhile, as a development support system for software tools having a visual user interface including a graphic editor, UIMS (User Interface
Management System) has begun to attract attention. As a kind of such a system, an interface builder is being commercialized, which interactively defines the arrangement of user interface parts such as display buttons and menus, and builds the appearance of tools. However, there is a problem that a developer of the graphic editor needs to call a library by conventional programming to perform operations such as editing figures and pictures by combining arbitrary figures, which is complicated. It was The object of the present invention is to select, from the graphic parts prepared in advance in the graphic library, those provided by the graphic editor as those which can be edited by the user of the graphic editor, and to allow the user to edit them. It is to realize a system that supports the development of a graphic editor by interactively and visually defining the operation to be performed.

[0004]

The present invention for achieving the above object is a graphic editor development support system, wherein a user editable graphic is designated as one graphic object or a combination of a plurality of objects. Then, the figure definition tool having the function of selecting the editing function that can be performed on those figures, and the state transition that visually indicates the operation for realizing the selected editing function by the user of the graphic editor are visually defined. And a code generation subsystem having a function of automatically generating a source code fragment of a program including the call of the graphic library for realizing the defined editing function.

[0005]

The editable figure is defined by the figure definition tool, and the state transitions representing the operation are defined as a visual state transition diagram by the operation definition tool. Then, the code generation subsystem automatically generates the source code of the program from the information defined by the tool.

[0006]

The present invention will be described in detail below. In the present invention,
It is assumed that one of the graphic libraries has the following features. A graphic to be drawn is treated as an object by an object-oriented method, and a library routine call for graphic editing such as drawing, moving a drawing position, and changing a drawing size can be similarly performed for all kinds of graphic objects. It has a mechanism to specify geometric relations between multiple graphic objects and realize the relation, and it is possible to treat multiple objects with such relations as a group of graphics. It is possible to call the library for each editing function such as drawing even for figures. User operations (for example, mouse button press, mouse pointer movement, etc.) are handled as events, and state transitions (what kind of action is executed and what state is performed if an event that is a certain state occurs and a certain condition is satisfied) The behavior of a program can be described by a set of rules for whether to move to.

The present invention is intended mainly for graphic editors that operate on a multi-window system and has the following functions. A function for designating a user-editable figure as one figure object or a combination of a plurality of objects, and selecting an editing function that can be performed on those figures. A function that visually defines the state transition that represents how the user of the graphic editor realizes the selected editing function. A function that automatically generates a source code fragment of a program that includes the above-mentioned graphic library call that realizes the defined editing function. FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of a graphic editor. The graphic editor is a graphic editing function implementation unit 1 that realizes a graphic editing operation by a user operation defined in this system, and a user interface component arrangement that is a program related to the appearance of the graphic editor other than the above defined by the interface builder. It comprises a part 2 and an information calculation part 3 which is a program of a part which handles information irrelevant to the appearance.

In the present invention, it is assumed that the graphic library used is as follows. Rectangles, circles, polygons, texts, straight lines, polygonal lines, and free-form curves are available as graphic objects. As editing functions for graphic objects, creation, destruction, normal display, highlighting, display deletion, movement, transformation, and rotation are prepared. As geometric relations between graphic objects, an inclusion relation in which one completely surrounds the other and a contact relation in which both contact at one point are prepared. The binding relationship is maintained. In particular, it is assumed that there is a procedure for returning a graphic including the coordinates of the mouse pointer inside.

Further, as shown in FIG. 2, the present system itself is realized as one of graphic editors, and a tool for creating two types of drawings, that is, a graphic definition tool 21 for creating a graphic definition drawing and an operation definition drawing are provided. It is composed of the operation definition tool 22 to be created. These tools have a function to hold the defined contents as information and a function to write the information to a file and read it from the file. Reference numeral 23 is a code generation subsystem for automatically generating the source code of the program from the information defined by the above two tools.

As shown in FIG. 3, the graphic definition tool is a tool for defining a graphic provided by the graphic editor to be developed so that it can be edited by the user, and each graphic provided in the graphic library. A graphic selection menu indicating an object, a drawing area for actually displaying the graphic, and an attribute setting window for designating a graphic displayed in the drawing area and setting attributes for the graphic. In the attribute setting window,
Specifies whether to allow the application of each editing function of the graphic. Furthermore, in the attribute setting window for multiple figures, geometric constraints are selected and names to be handled as a group are specified. As shown in FIG. 4, the operation definition tool is a tool for defining a state transition representing an operation as a visual state transition diagram, and has a drawing area for displaying a state or a graphic representing the transition. States are represented by circles and nodes that display the names of states inside, and transitions are represented by arrows connecting the nodes. When you specify the arrow, the state transition setting window appears, and the event name, condition (source code of the program that returns a boolean value), action (arbitrary source code)
To set.

Here, as an example of a graphic editor to be developed, a graphic editor whose purpose is to generate an arbitrary number of rectangles capable of displaying an arbitrary character string at an arbitrary position will be described. The overall appearance of the graphic editor and the realization of the function of extracting information from the created drawing are irrelevant to this system, and therefore the description thereof is omitted.
The operation of the graphic editor to be developed is as follows. Each graphic is selected by pressing the left mouse button on the graphic, and the graphic is highlighted when selected. However, the choice is exclusive. In other words, when one figure is selected, another figure is deselected. If you press the right mouse button in an empty area, the minimum size rectangle will be displayed in that area and it will be selected. The text inside the rectangle is edited by keyboard input while the figure is selected. Dragging the mouse on the selected figure (moving the pointer while pressing the button) moves the figure.

A method of making the following definition as the operation definition of the graphic editor in this system will be described as an example. 1) A combination of a rectangle and a text is set as a single figure to be edited. 2) When the left mouse button is pressed on the figure, it is highlighted to show that it has been selected. Further, the cases 1) and 2) will be described in detail.

Case 1) (a) As shown in FIG. 5, a rectangle is selected from the resident menu with the graphic definition tool (the rectangle is displayed in the drawing area). (B) A rectangular attribute setting window is displayed to enable movement, transformation, and highlighting. (C) Select text from the resident menu. (D) A text attribute setting window is displayed as shown in FIG. 6 and transformation (in the text means changing a character) is set to be possible. (E) As shown in FIG. 7, the attribute setting window is displayed by designating the rectangle and the text, the geometric constraint relation that the former completely contains the latter is designated, and this figure is named as a box. And As a result, the figure in which any editable text is displayed in the rectangle (when the length of the text changes, the length of the sides of the rectangle also changes due to the constraint relationship) is defined as the figure named Box.

In the case of 2) The operation of this graphic editor can be expressed in a state transition space in which there are three states, a selected state, a non-selected state and a moving state, as shown in FIG. This state transition shifts to the selected state when an event occurs when the left button is pressed in the non-selected state or the selected state and the condition that the mouse button at that time is inside the figure is true. This state transition is defined by the operation definition tool as follows. (A) Generate nodes with three states and name them. (B) An arrow connecting the non-selected state to the selected state is generated, and the event is returned by pressing the left button as the event name in the state transition setting window, and whether or not the condition is inside the figure is returned.
In some cases, specify the procedure name that assigns the ID of the figure to a variable, and as the action, specify the source code that calls the procedure that highlights the figure when the variable that indicates the figure is not null (Fig. 9).

The operation of the graphic editor other than these can be defined in the same manner. The information indicating the operation thus defined is held inside the system, and when the information is passed to the subsystem that automatically generates the code based on this information, a part of the source program is generated.
If you prepare an interpreter subsystem that can interpret the information of the defined operation and execute it on the spot in the same position as the subsystem that generates the code, the user interface part of the graphic editor to be developed can be independent. You can also try. In addition, this function makes it possible to develop the user interface part as a prototype early and have users and user interface researchers try it out, and it is easy to reflect that opinion in the design of the user interface of the graphic editor. Become.

[0016]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Instead of writing everything as a conventional program that calls an existing graphic library in order to develop a function to create and edit diagrams and pictures by the user performing the prepared operation in the graphic editor, It enables visual and interactive work to define the behavior of a more abstract graphic editor. Providing such a development support environment has the effect of improving the development efficiency of various graphic editors expected in the future.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a graphic editor.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration of a graphic editor development support system.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining a graphic definition tool.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining an operation definition tool.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining the definition of a rectangle.

FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining the definition of text.

FIG. 7 is a diagram for explaining a graphic in which a rectangle and text are combined.

FIG. 8 is a diagram for explaining a definition of a state.

FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining the definition of state transition.

FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram showing an internal hierarchical structure of a graphic editor.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Figure Editing Function Realization Section 2 User Interface Parts Placement Section 3 Information Calculation Section 21 Graphic Definition Tool 22 Operation Definition Tool 23 Code Generation Subsystem

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A graphic editor development support system for developing a software tool for creating and editing an arbitrary figure or picture composed of various figures on a display screen using a computer, which is editable by a user. A graphic definition tool having a function of designating a graphic as one graphic object or a combination of a plurality of objects and selecting an editing function that can be performed on the graphic, and what kind of editing function is selected by the user of the graphic editor. An operation definition tool having a function of visually defining a state transition representing whether it is realized by an operation, and a function of automatically generating a source code piece of a program including a call of the graphic library for realizing the defined editing function. A code generation subsystem having Ikkuedita development support system.