On the way of bottom-up designing textual domain-specific modelling languages
Bastian Roth, Matthias Jahn, Stefan Jablonski · 2013
The development of domain-specific modelling languages (DSMLs) is not a trivial task. During recent years, a new approach has arisen which enables users to sketch example models that are used as basis for deriving an appropriate DSML. Until now, this bottom-up approach is merely applied to graphical DSMLs. However, the field of textual DSMLs is also very large and we believe that it can benefit from the bottom-up method as well. To really support users during this method it is necessary to equip them with an intuitively utilizable tool. In case of textual DSMLs, this needs to be an editor that allows for entering free text. Hence, in this paper we present the requirements for such an editor and how a basic solution may look like. Finally, we state some further challenges that need to be solved to achieve full support for developing textual DSMLs the bottom-up way.