Programming through pictorial transformations

Research into visualization and animation of programs has typically been approached from the viewpoint of how to automate, at least partially, the instrumentation of programs already written in conventional textual languages. PT (pictorial transformations) takes the approach that if instead of beginning with an existing program, one begins by first describing visual data representations and then visually manipulating them to develop program algorithms, then their animation is almost a side-effect of the development process. This approach simplifies the development of animated programs. The authors motivate the use of PT by way of an example application.<>