This paper describes glyph representation, that is, shape representation of inheritance relationships between a superclass and subclasses in an object-oriented programming language. The inheritance relationships in object-oriented programming languages are usually represented in a visual programming environment by a diagram of a tree graph or a nested structure. That diagram is not integrated with a code view showing control and data flows. Using the proposed representation, one can understand the inheritance relationships of classes and the assignment compatibility or type conformance just by seeing the glyphs. One thus does not need to look at a hierarchy diagram in order to recognize them. The inheritance relationships are represented by inclusion relationships of glyphs. Methods for generating suitable glyphs from a class hierarchy are also described, as is a prototype system for glyph generation. Experiments using the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), which has more than 1,500 classes, show that one can recognize inheritance relationships in the proposed representation faster than in the usual textual representation. Consequently the proposed representation can facilitate the understanding of inheritance in visual object-oriented programming environments.
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Noritaka OSAWA, "Visualization of Inheritance Relationships Using Glyphs" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information,
vol. E85-D, no. 1, pp. 275-282, January 2002, doi: .
Abstract: This paper describes glyph representation, that is, shape representation of inheritance relationships between a superclass and subclasses in an object-oriented programming language. The inheritance relationships in object-oriented programming languages are usually represented in a visual programming environment by a diagram of a tree graph or a nested structure. That diagram is not integrated with a code view showing control and data flows. Using the proposed representation, one can understand the inheritance relationships of classes and the assignment compatibility or type conformance just by seeing the glyphs. One thus does not need to look at a hierarchy diagram in order to recognize them. The inheritance relationships are represented by inclusion relationships of glyphs. Methods for generating suitable glyphs from a class hierarchy are also described, as is a prototype system for glyph generation. Experiments using the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), which has more than 1,500 classes, show that one can recognize inheritance relationships in the proposed representation faster than in the usual textual representation. Consequently the proposed representation can facilitate the understanding of inheritance in visual object-oriented programming environments.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/e85-d_1_275/_p
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@ARTICLE{e85-d_1_275,
author={Noritaka OSAWA, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Visualization of Inheritance Relationships Using Glyphs},
year={2002},
volume={E85-D},
number={1},
pages={275-282},
abstract={This paper describes glyph representation, that is, shape representation of inheritance relationships between a superclass and subclasses in an object-oriented programming language. The inheritance relationships in object-oriented programming languages are usually represented in a visual programming environment by a diagram of a tree graph or a nested structure. That diagram is not integrated with a code view showing control and data flows. Using the proposed representation, one can understand the inheritance relationships of classes and the assignment compatibility or type conformance just by seeing the glyphs. One thus does not need to look at a hierarchy diagram in order to recognize them. The inheritance relationships are represented by inclusion relationships of glyphs. Methods for generating suitable glyphs from a class hierarchy are also described, as is a prototype system for glyph generation. Experiments using the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), which has more than 1,500 classes, show that one can recognize inheritance relationships in the proposed representation faster than in the usual textual representation. Consequently the proposed representation can facilitate the understanding of inheritance in visual object-oriented programming environments.},
keywords={},
doi={},
ISSN={},
month={January},}
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TY - JOUR
TI - Visualization of Inheritance Relationships Using Glyphs
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 275
EP - 282
AU - Noritaka OSAWA
PY - 2002
DO -
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN -
VL - E85-D
IS - 1
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - January 2002
AB - This paper describes glyph representation, that is, shape representation of inheritance relationships between a superclass and subclasses in an object-oriented programming language. The inheritance relationships in object-oriented programming languages are usually represented in a visual programming environment by a diagram of a tree graph or a nested structure. That diagram is not integrated with a code view showing control and data flows. Using the proposed representation, one can understand the inheritance relationships of classes and the assignment compatibility or type conformance just by seeing the glyphs. One thus does not need to look at a hierarchy diagram in order to recognize them. The inheritance relationships are represented by inclusion relationships of glyphs. Methods for generating suitable glyphs from a class hierarchy are also described, as is a prototype system for glyph generation. Experiments using the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE), which has more than 1,500 classes, show that one can recognize inheritance relationships in the proposed representation faster than in the usual textual representation. Consequently the proposed representation can facilitate the understanding of inheritance in visual object-oriented programming environments.
ER -