A review of source code projections in integrated development environments

The term Projectional editor is commonly used for tools that can work directly with the program´s abstract syntax tree. They are able to provide different views of the program, according to the specific editor used. The ability to look at the program from multiple views is often requested as a mean to simplify program comprehension. During their evolution, the Integrated Development Environments were equipped with tools that provide such possibilities. Many of them already work with the parsed abstract syntax tree of the code and thus can be considered for projections. In this paper we review projections available in 6 widely used IDEs. The review categorizes existing projections and shows that significant number of IDE tools depend on the knowledge of program structure, but also that data from other integrated tools are used to enhance the projections.