Semi-structured cursor movements in MUPE-2
Nazim H. Madhavji, Mingjun Zhang, Sami Boulos, Yuan Xiang Gu · Software Engineering Journal · 1989
It has been recognised that cursor movements on a textual representation of a program present some problems when the movements are based on an underlying abstract syntax tree in a programming system. Approaches taken in many systems are to use structured or textual cursor movements, although both these approaches have some drawbacks. This paper presents a new approach, called semi-structured movements, based on the idea of cursor movement paths, or streams, that the cursor can follow in a program. The key benefits of this approach are that it eliminates the ‘treeness’ of structured movements and the flatness of textual movements, while providing an inherent support for program editing and browsing. Semi-structured cursor movements have been successfully implemented in the MUPE-2 programming environment, and this paper gives several scenarios in order to illustrate example cursor movements.