Documentation Methods for Visual Languages

Abstract

Many people argue that Visual Programming languages are self-documenting. This article points out that there is no such thing as a self-documenting language. Besides this, many popular methods used to document programs written in other languages do not suit Visual Languages perfectly, and need some tailoring. Therefore, the authors propose a visual adaptation of the dataflow method of documentation. They also present versions of instantiated documentation and denotational semantics applied to visual languages. Finally, they present a Prolog based complete example of documentation.