implementing a user interface as a system of attributes
In a syntax directed editor, or programming environment using a graphical user interface, how do you keep the display and other aspects of the user interface up to date with changes to the underlying abstract syntax tree? This paper addresses this question by showing how existing incremental attribute evaluation techniques can be combined with graphical techniques to allow a user interface to be managed automatically as a system of attributes. In a nutshell, presentations can be described and implemented by small pseudocode fragments for a special purpose graphics pseudomachine. The control and composition of these code fragments, and hence the presentations which they implement, is done as an attribute computation.
user interface systems attributes direct programming environment graphical user interfaces graphics aspect change abstraction tree paper incremental evaluation management present fragmentation control compositing code computation