Relationship Between IDL (Interface Description Language) and Structure Editor Generation Technology.

This paper discusses observed commonalities and differences between IDL and structure editor generation technologies. IDL interface description language is technology for generation of tool intercommunication support with roots in compiler generation. Structure editor generation technology has its roots in syntax-directed editors. It produces environments for interactive viewing and manipulation of formally specified structures. Both technologies use a formal notation for structural and constraint descriptions. From these descriptions both generation tools automatically produce software for reading, writing, and manipulating instances of the described structures, as well as for checking specified constraints on information contained in the structures. The IDL technology emphasizes generation of batch-oriented applications while the structure editor generation technology is tailored to supporting interactive applications. Structure editor generation technology has been applied to itself, i.e., to building an interactive structure editor generation environment. Author