Supporting tailorable program visualisation through literate programming and fisheye views
This paper describes the Jaba program editor and browser that allows users to tailor the level of abstraction at which they visualise, browse, edit and document object-oriented programs. Its design draws on concepts from literate programming, holophrasting displays, fisheye visualisation and hypertext to allow programmers to rapidly move between abstract and detailed views of Java classes. The paper focuses on the motivation for, and user interface issues surrounding, the integration of these facilities in Jaba. Limitations in the current tools and theories for programming support are identified, and modifications are proposed and demonstrated. Examples include overcoming the static post-hoc documentation support provided by Javadoc, and normalising Furnas's degree of interest fisheye visualisation formula to avoid excessive suppression of program segments.
literate programming documentation fisheye visualisation hypertext java programming environments