An artist´s studio: a metaphor for modularity and abstraction in a graphical diagramming environment

The paper describes a graphic editor in a visual diagramming environment. Its management tools permit heterogeneous users to work with large graphic diagrams. Modularization is provided using the metaphor of an artist´s studio, complete with a gallery of compositions, and sketches. Visibility control mechanisms are proposed as a method to provide information hiding capabilities at various levels of granularity. Abstraction mechanisms are provided by syntactic, semantic and pragmatic zooming concepts, for controlling the level of various types of detail visible to the user. Structured naming is another abstraction mechanism, by which graphical references may be made to visual objects. The studio paradigm has been implemented on a pen computer using the PenPoint operating system, as a part of the Hyperflow visual programming environment