ACE: A Cliché-based Program Structure Editor

Abstract

ACE extends the syntax-directed paradigm of program editing by adding support for programming clichés. A programming cliché is a standard algorithmic fragment. ACE supports the rapid construction of programs through the combination of clichés selected from a cliché library. ACE is also innovative in the way it support the basic structure editor operations. Instead of being based directly on the grammar for a programming language, ACE is based on a modified grammar which is designed to facilitate editing. Uniformity of the user interface is achieved by encoding the modified grammar as a set of clichés.