A PROTOTYPING METALANGUAGE WITH FORMAL SEMANTICS FOR THE XINOTECH PROGRAM COMPOSER

XINOTECH HAS RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED TECHNOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE-BASED, MULTI-LINGUAL, GRAMMAR-GENERATED INTERACTIVE PROGRAM COMPOSITION AND IS COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOR ADA, CMS-2 AND OTHER LANGUAGES. ALTHOUGH THIS TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES A SOLID FRAMEWORK FOR ABSTRACT TREE MANIPULATION, IT DOES NOT HAVE THE REACH TO SUPPORT LANGUAGE PROTOTYPING AND INTERACTIVE SEMANTICS. THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH IS TO DEVELOP THE CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS FOR A NEW SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT MODEL. THIS MODEL WILL CONSIST OF A) A METALANGUAGE, INCLUDING A GRAMMAR NOTATION FOR THE LANGUAGE-INDEPENDENT SPECIFICATION OF INTERACTIVE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS, DESIGNED TO SUPPORT EMBEDDED LANGUAGES, EASY LANGUAGE PROTOTYPING AND LANGUAGE REUSABILITY, B) A METALANGUAGE PROCESSOR FOR LANGUAGE GENERATION, C) THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE SUPPORTING INTERACTIVE SEMANTIC EVALUATION, INCLUDING A GLOBAL DATABASE, AND D) A USER INTERFACE TO INTERACTIVELY ACCESS AND UTILIZE THE SEMANTIC INFORMATION. THIS MODEL WOULD BE IMPLEMENTED ON TOP OF THE EXISTING TECHNOLOGY.