Re: Visual and text languages

[alex]

> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:51 AM, John Daughtry  wrote:
>> What are, say, the
>> three biggest open questions/challenges in visual languages? Is there a
>> meta-paper that perhaps discusses VL from such a high level?

On 10 March 2011 17:06, John Zabroski  wrote:
> Yes, there is.  Jon Barwise and John Etchemandy's seminal paper Visual
> information and valid reasoning is the best place for you to start.

I found a PDF of this, it's interesting but seems to only be about
representing discrete relationships in 2D spaces, which I think is
something that text does rather well by design.  Much is made of
things such as 2D Euler diagrams, but for many things 1D Euler
diagrams, i.e. parentheses seem to work perfectly well.

I'm more interested in the use of VL to include analog spatial
relationships, such as conceptual spaces where proximity = similarity,
and ways of integrating those with computation.  Does anyone know of
the use of distance measurements in programming notation?

For a broad review of visual language research I recommend Alan's
paper "Metacognitive Theories of Visual Programming: What do we think
we are doing?", old but I find it very interesting:
  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/VL96.html

Cheers

alex

-- 
http://yaxu.org/


-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[Derek M Jones]

All,


There is a lot of scattered research on visual languages... some more


The best book I know of on visual language is:
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott Mccloud

--
Derek M. Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:de...@knosof.co.uk
Source code analysis   http://www.knosof.co.uk

--
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity 
in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[John Zabroski]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:51 AM, John Daughtry  wrote:

>
> There is a lot of scattered research on visual languages... some more
> directly studying visual languages than others. Some extant work is about
> visual languages when the researcher doesn't even realize it (a colleagues
> work on visual ACL router configuration comes to mind). What are, say, the
> three biggest open questions/challenges in visual languages? Is there a
> meta-paper that perhaps discusses VL from such a high level?
>
> John Daughtry
>
>
>

Yes, there is.  Jon Barwise and John Etchemandy's seminal paper Visual
information and valid
reasoningis the best
place for you to start.  I own this paper via hardcopy text of Logical
Reasoning with Diagrams .
Barwise's other book, Language, Proof, and
Logic,
deals with even more issues and explains things like the subtleties of
interpreting natural linguistic sentences.

Another book that has nothing to do with visual languages, but I'd
recommend, is William Kent's Data and Reality.  That book simply explained,
way ahead of its time, the struggles of dynamically distributed, dynamically
federated systems like most Enterprise Resource Planning / Customer
Relationship Management / Accounting / Billing stovepiped and integrated
solutions deal with.  The reason I think its pertinent to this discussion is
that many languages use in enterprises, like dialects of UML, tend to miss
what is hard about the underlying problem they are trying to use the visual
language to solve.  I think this explains why many programmers find UML
ineffective for their tasks.

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[John Zabroski]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Alan Blackwell
wrote:

>
> > Of course, 'real'
> > linguists have their terms and analyses for these things, which are
> > probably more useful.
>
> Jon Oberlander once wrote a nice paper 'Grice for Graphics'
> (1996), in which he elaborated the ways that secondary notation
> is used in technical diagrams as a kind of linguistic pragmatics.
>
> The example of how Max/MSP programmers lay out the flow of their
> system from left to right, despite the fact that the official syntax
> doesn't require this, is exactly like the cases that Jon analysed.
>
> --Alan Blackwell
>

Great example.

Also, a more obscure example that I love is the Barker technique in UML
Class diagrams.  I've only seen it explained once before, in David Hay's
book Data Model Patterns, but it is extremely convincing in explaining how a
human or computer *should* draw a class diagram, and what styles of diagram
layout boost problem domain cognition.  It is only anecdotal, and not a
formal study, but the example is truly amazing.  At the same time, the
passer-by might say, "Well, sure, if you untangle any piece of spaghetti
you'll get an improvement."  But what is neat is that there is a consistent
set of rules Richard Barker (at Oracle) created for drawing these diagrams
to help people better understand database schemas.

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[alex]

I *really* wish I could stop typing 'secondary syntax' instead of
'secondary notation'. :(

On 9 March 2011 13:47, alex  wrote:
> On 9 March 2011 13:31, Thomas Green  wrote:
>> I wonder whether the way that spoken English sometimes uses pitch and stress
>> to emphasize particular parts of an utterance ("No, it's MINE!") should be
>> seen through the same spectacles? Of course, 'real' linguists have their
>> terms and analyses for these things, which are probably more useful.
>
> Yes absolutely!  Prosody is a *great* analogy for secondary syntax,
> and comparing them is one of the themes of the thesis I'm writing.
> They're both forms of mental imagery used to support language, i.e.
> paralinguistics.
>
> alex
>
> --
> http://yaxu.org/
>



-- 
http://yaxu.org/


-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[John Daughtry]

There is a lot of scattered research on visual languages... some more
directly studying visual languages than others. Some extant work is about
visual languages when the researcher doesn't even realize it (a colleagues
work on visual ACL router configuration comes to mind). What are, say, the
three biggest open questions/challenges in visual languages? Is there a
meta-paper that perhaps discusses VL from such a high level?

John Daughtry



On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:47 AM, alex  wrote:

> On 9 March 2011 13:31, Thomas Green  wrote:
> > I wonder whether the way that spoken English sometimes uses pitch and
> stress
> > to emphasize particular parts of an utterance ("No, it's MINE!") should
> be
> > seen through the same spectacles? Of course, 'real' linguists have their
> > terms and analyses for these things, which are probably more useful.
>
> Yes absolutely!  Prosody is a *great* analogy for secondary syntax,
> and comparing them is one of the themes of the thesis I'm writing.
> They're both forms of mental imagery used to support language, i.e.
> paralinguistics.
>
> alex
>
> --
> http://yaxu.org/
>
> --
> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt
> charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>
>

Re: Visual and text languages

[alex]

On 9 March 2011 13:31, Thomas Green  wrote:
> I wonder whether the way that spoken English sometimes uses pitch and stress
> to emphasize particular parts of an utterance ("No, it's MINE!") should be
> seen through the same spectacles? Of course, 'real' linguists have their
> terms and analyses for these things, which are probably more useful.

Yes absolutely!  Prosody is a *great* analogy for secondary syntax,
and comparing them is one of the themes of the thesis I'm writing.
They're both forms of mental imagery used to support language, i.e.
paralinguistics.

alex

-- 
http://yaxu.org/

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[Alan Blackwell]

> Of course, 'real'  
> linguists have their terms and analyses for these things, which are  
> probably more useful.

Jon Oberlander once wrote a nice paper 'Grice for Graphics'
(1996), in which he elaborated the ways that secondary notation
is used in technical diagrams as a kind of linguistic pragmatics.

The example of how Max/MSP programmers lay out the flow of their 
system from left to right, despite the fact that the official syntax 
doesn't require this, is exactly like the cases that Jon analysed.

Alan

-- 
Alan Blackwell
Reader in Interdisciplinary Design, University of Cambridge
Further details from www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/


-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[Thomas Green]

On 9 Mar 2011, at 12:24, alex wrote:


Having layout for unconstrained
secondary notation is of course also very valuable for human-human
communication.


You bet.

I wonder whether the way that spoken English sometimes uses pitch and  
stress to emphasize particular parts of an utterance ("No, it's  
MINE!") should be seen through the same spectacles? Of course, 'real'  
linguists have their terms and analyses for these things, which are  
probably more useful.


Thomas


--
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity 
in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[alex]

Corrections...

On 9 March 2011 10:37, alex  wrote:
> Artists often say they like Max and PD because they are visual.
> However you can put boxes where you like, it makes no difference
> because visual layout in these languages is entirely secondary syntax.

I meant secondary notation (one of Thomas's cognitive dimensions).

> In opposition to Myers, I think the value of so-called `visual
> languages' is that they are not constrained by visible dimensions *at
> all*.

Not *the* value, but *a* value.  Having layout for unconstrained
secondary notation is of course also very valuable for human-human
communication.

alex

-- 
http://yaxu.org/

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Re: Visual and text languages

[alex]

Hi Dan,

I've come to the conclusion that "visual language" is for the most
part contradiction in terms.

When I look at LabVIEW, Max or PD, I see an array of iconography and
symbols which are clearly text.  If you replace the word 'or' with a
triangle, you're just replacing a string of symbols with a single
symbol.  This has major drawbacks as there isn't a button on the
standard keyboard for the triangle symbol.

Artists often say they like Max and PD because they are visual.
However you can put boxes where you like, it makes no difference
because visual layout in these languages is entirely secondary syntax.
 Max users often counter this point by saying right-left order gives
execution order, which is an odd point as this is true of almost all
'non-visual' programming languages.

There seems to be an idea in computer interfaces that vision is
somehow 'more advanced' than words. This seems somewhat in denial of
the history of our species.

Myers (Taxonomies of visual programming and program visualization;
1990) defines visual programming as "any system that allows the user
to specify a program in a two (or more) dimensional fashion."  This is
odd as in almost all visual programming languages I've seen, 2D
arrangement has no syntactical value.  However a number of `textual'
languages, notably Haskell and Python, *do* have 2D syntax.  So maybe
they're the answer for your request for visual languages with keyboard
input! :)

In opposition to Myers, I think the value of so-called `visual
languages' is that they are not constrained by visible dimensions *at
all*.  As you are unconstrained by the usual visual property of
adjacency, you can define graphs of arbitrary high dimension,
hypercubes and up.

Considering the Cognitive Dimensions literature it seems clear that
rather than a visual / non-visual language dichotomy, there is instead
a dimension of linguistic/visual integration.  Source code always has
a visual component, usually not part of the syntax but still very
important to communicate conceptual aspects of the program in
secondary syntax.  I think it *is* possible to integrate visuospatial
and linguistic notations more, and research around Dual Coding theory
seems to suggest that the result would be computer languages more
suitable for femine than masculine tendencies.  I am working on a
programming language inspired by the ReacTable for example, that I
hope to demonstrate at the PPIG WIP in Sheffield.

So in conclusion, in my view visual languages are not visual, and that
the dichotomy has been drawn in the wrong place. Instead language and
imagery should be viewed as different aspects of notation and thought,
and we should seek to integrate them in interesting ways, not think of
them in opposition.

Cheers,

alex


On 8 March 2011 09:40, Dan Stowell  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me to his
> interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages. "Overall, we believe
> that in many respects VPLs offer substantial gains over conventional textual
> languages, but at present their HCI aspects are still under-developed.
> Improvements in secondary notation, in editing, and in searching will
> greatly raise their overall usability."
>
> As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in particular,
> livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature is
> on VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't been
> able to find a recent survey, any recommendations?
>
> (Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility of VPLs
> via purely keyboard control...)
>
> Best
> Dan
>
>
> On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:
>>
>> Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
>> I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
>> of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
>> developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
>> know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
>> experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
>> you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
>> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/
>>
>> CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
>> possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>> --
>> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
>> exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
>> (SC 038302).
>
>
> --
> Dan Stowell
> Postdoctoral Research Assistant
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
> http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
> http://www.mcld.co.uk/
>



-- 
http://yaxu.org/

Re: Visual and text languages

[Alan Blackwell]

A useful resource from the days of LabView and HP VEE is Kirsten 
Whitley's review of the empirical evidence for the value of 
those kinds of system:

Kirsten N. Whitley: Visual Programming Languages and the Empirical Evidence For 
and Against. J. Vis. Lang. Comput. 8(1): 109-142 (1997)

As I recall, one of the very few controlled studies of visual
versus text languages on an actual project used HP VEE as the
visual comparison environment.

However, in the 15 years since then, I think the consensus in 
the field is that systematic analysis and application of design 
guidances such as Thomas's cognitive dimensions is far more 
valuable than single-case comparisons.

(I also did a study with Kirsten, back in those days, when we 
solicited information from LabView users about their personal 
experience of using the system. We found out some interesting 
and entertaining things that informed later work on CDs).

Alan

> Hello Dan,
> 
> I make my living writing LabVIEW which is drawn rather then written. I 
> presume 
> this is what you mean by VPL.
> 
> This language would be impossible to use without a mouse. 
> 
> Another language that used to compete in the same space as LabVIEW was HP 
> VEE. 
> It would have also been impossible to use without a mouse. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Dan Stowell 
> To: PPIG Listserve 
> Cc: Thomas Green 
> Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 3:40:35 AM
> Subject: Visual and text languages
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me to his 
> interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages. "Overall, we believe 
> that in many respects VPLs offer substantial gains over conventional textual 
> languages, but at present their HCI aspects are still under-developed. 
> Improvements in secondary notation, in editing, and in searching will greatly 
> raise their overall usability."
> 
> As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in particular, 
> livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature is on 
> VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't been able to 
> find a recent survey, any recommendations?
> 
> (Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility of VPLs 
> via 
> purely keyboard control...)
> 
> Best
> Dan
> 
> 
> On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:
> > Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
> > I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
> > of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
> > developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
> > know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
> > experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
> > you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
> > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/
> > 
> > CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
> > possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .
> > 
> > Thomas
> > 
> > --
> > The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
> > exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
> > (SC 038302).
> 
> 
> -- Dan Stowell
> Postdoctoral Research Assistant
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
> http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
> http://www.mcld.co.uk/
> 

-- 
Alan Blackwell
Reader in Interdisciplinary Design, University of Cambridge
Further details from www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/

Re: Visual and text languages

[Cyrus Omar]

You might be interested in reading about Barista. Here are some nice videos.
The paper is worth a read-through too.

  http://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/barista.shtml

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 10:03, Clendon Gibson  wrote:

> Hello Dan,
>
> I make my living writing LabVIEW which is drawn rather then written. I
> presume this is what you mean by VPL.
>
> This language would be impossible to use without a mouse.
>
> Another language that used to compete in the same space as LabVIEW was HP
> VEE. It would have also been impossible to use without a mouse.
>
>  --
> *From:* Dan Stowell 
> *To:* PPIG Listserve 
> *Cc:* Thomas Green 
> *Sent:* Tue, March 8, 2011 3:40:35 AM
>
> *Subject:* Visual and text languages
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me to his
> interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages. "Overall, we believe
> that in many respects VPLs offer substantial gains over conventional textual
> languages, but at present their HCI aspects are still under-developed.
> Improvements in secondary notation, in editing, and in searching will
> greatly raise their overall usability."
>
> As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in particular,
> livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature is
> on VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't been
> able to find a recent survey, any recommendations?
>
> (Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility of VPLs
> via purely keyboard control...)
>
> Best
> Dan
>
>
> On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:
> > Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
> > I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
> > of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
> > developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
> > know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
> > experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
> > you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
> > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/
> >
> > CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
> > possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .
> >
> > Thomas
> >
> > --
> > The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
> > exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
> > (SC 038302).
>
>
> -- Dan Stowell
> Postdoctoral Research Assistant
> Centre for Digital Music
> Queen Mary, University of London
> Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
> http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
> http://www.mcld.co.uk/
>

Re: Visual and text languages

[Clendon Gibson]

Hello Dan,

I make my living writing LabVIEW which is drawn rather then written. I presume 
this is what you mean by VPL.

This language would be impossible to use without a mouse. 

Another language that used to compete in the same space as LabVIEW was HP VEE. 
It would have also been impossible to use without a mouse. 






From: Dan Stowell 
To: PPIG Listserve 
Cc: Thomas Green 
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 3:40:35 AM
Subject: Visual and text languages

Hi,

I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me to his 
interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages. "Overall, we believe 
that in many respects VPLs offer substantial gains over conventional textual 
languages, but at present their HCI aspects are still under-developed. 
Improvements in secondary notation, in editing, and in searching will greatly 
raise their overall usability."

As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in particular, 
livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature is on 
VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't been able to 
find a recent survey, any recommendations?

(Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility of VPLs via 
purely keyboard control...)

Best
Dan


On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:
> Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
> I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
> of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
> developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
> know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
> experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
> you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/
> 
> CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
> possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .
> 
> Thomas
> 
> --
> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
> exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
> (SC 038302).


-- Dan Stowell
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
http://www.mcld.co.uk/

RE: Visual and text languages

[Guzdial, Mark]

Be sure to see this recent ACM TOCHI paper: 
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1592440.1592442&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=11627642&CFTOKEN=32408758

Can direct manipulation lower the barriers to computer programming and promote 
transfer of training?: An experimental study

By Hundhausen, Farley, and Brown

Novices face many barriers when learning to program a computer, including the 
need to learn both a new syntax and a model of computation. By constraining 
syntax and providing concrete visual representations on which to operate, 
direct manipulation programming environments can potentially lower these 
barriers. However, what if the ultimate learning goal of the novice is to be 
able to program in conventional textual languages, as is the case for 
introductory computer science students? Can direct manipulation programming 
environments lower the initial barriers to programming, and, at the same time, 
facilitate positive transfer to textual programming? To address this question, 
we designed a new direct manipulation programming interface for novices, and 
conducted an experimental study to compare the programming processes and 
outcomes promoted by the direct manipulation interface against those promoted 
by a textual programming interface. We found that the direct manipulation 
interface promoted significantly better initial programming outcomes, positive 
transfer to the textual interface, and significant differences in programming 
processes. Our results show that direct manipulation interfaces can provide 
novices with a "way in" to traditional textual programming.

-Original Message-
From: Dan Stowell [mailto:dan.stow...@eecs.qmul.ac.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 4:41 AM
To: PPIG Listserve
Cc: Thomas Green
Subject: Visual and text languages

Hi,

I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me to 
his interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages. "Overall, we 
believe that in many respects VPLs offer substantial gains over 
conventional textual languages, but at present their HCI aspects are 
still under-developed. Improvements in secondary notation, in editing, 
and in searching will greatly raise their overall usability."

As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in particular, 
livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature 
is on VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't 
been able to find a recent survey, any recommendations?

(Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility of 
VPLs via purely keyboard control...)

Best
Dan


On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:
> Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
> I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
> of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
> developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
> know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
> experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
> you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/
>
> CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
> possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .
>
> Thomas
>
> --
> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
> exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
> (SC 038302).


-- 
Dan Stowell
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
http://www.mcld.co.uk/

Re: Visual and text languages

[Stefano Federici]

I'd be interested to know what the state of the literature is on  
VPLs, especially in comparison against text languages. I haven't  
been able to find a recent survey, any recommendations?


Excellent introductory visual languages are Scratch  
(http://scratch.mid.edu), Alice (http://www.alice.org/) and StarLogo  
TNG (http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng). They are  
describer in several papers (mainly by ACM).


If you don't find references I can send them to you.

Stefano



Citando Dan Stowell :


Hi,

I'm fairly new to the PP literature. Thomas's self-promotion led me  
to his interesting 1996 paper on visual programming languages.  
"Overall, we believe that in many respects VPLs offer substantial  
gains over conventional textual languages, but at present their HCI  
aspects are still under-developed. Improvements in secondary  
notation, in editing, and in searching will greatly raise their  
overall usability."


As someone who does a lot of work in textual languages - in  
particular, livecoding - I'd be interested to know what the state of  
the literature is on VPLs, especially in comparison against text  
languages. I haven't been able to find a recent survey, any  
recommendations?


(Also, as someone who has had RSI, I wonder about the accessibility  
of VPLs via purely keyboard control...)


Best
Dan


On 01/03/2011 17:32, Thomas Green wrote:

Er, a spot of self-promotion here . the various types of comparison
I did in the past led to a framework which attempts to make some sense
of the underlying trade-offs, the cognitive dimensions framework,
developed by me and lots of other people. Stefano, if you simply want to
know whether your new tool works, then you probably just need to do an
experiment and stop; but if you want to know why it works (or doesn't),
you might take a look at that framework. There's a resources page here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/

CDs analysis is quite quick, though very vague. It's actually quite
possible that it would reveal problems you've overlooked .

Thomas

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Dan Stowell
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm
http://www.mcld.co.uk/





Stefano Federici
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Università degli Studi di Cagliari
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
Dipartimento di Scienze Pedagogiche e Filosofiche
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