Visual tools for generating iconic programming environments

The authors present VAMPIRE a visual system for rapid generation of iconic programming systems. VAMPIRE uses a graphical class editor to construct a hierarchy describing an iconic language´s structure. Each node in the hierarchy represents an abstraction of a group of language elements; each leaf represents an icon which can be placed into a program. Attributes are added to each `class´ in the tree to represent aspects of the language elements, including `icons´ which describe the graphical visualization of the elements and `rules´ which describe the semantics of the element. The semantics of the language are defined using attributed graphical rule. VAMPIRE has been designed so that it can create iconic systems similar to all of the major classes which have appeared to date in the literature