CEViNEdit: improving the process of creating cognitively effective graphical editors with GMF
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CEViNEdit: improving the process of creating cognitively effective graphical editors with GMF David Granada1 · Juan M. Vara1 · Mercedes Merayo2 · Esperanza Marcos1 Received: 15 February 2019 / Revised: 25 September 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The rise of domain-specific (Visual) languages and the inherent complexity of developing graphical editors for these languages have led to the emergence of proposals that provide support for this task. Most of these proposals are principally based on EMF and GMF, which effectively help to simplify and increase the level of automation of the development process of the editors, but it is important to recall that these proposals have some important disadvantages, mainly related to the learning curve of these technologies, poor documentation or the complexity of providing all the customisation possibilities to the user. In addition, in the process of developing a domain-specific language, issues related to graphical conventions have historically been undervalued, while most of the effort has been focused on semantic aspects. In fact, definitions of the concrete (visual) syntax of modelling languages in Software Engineering are usually based on common sense, intuition, the reuse of existing notations or emulation of common practices. In order to alleviate the inherent complexity of the EMF/GMF approach for the development of graphical editors and to support the evaluation of the quality of visual notations of modelling languages, this article presents CEViNEdit, an intuitive tool that simultaneously supports the semi-automatic generation of graphical editors and the assessment of the cognitive effectiveness of the visual notation implemented by the editor. Keywords Model-driven engineering (MDE) · Domain-Specific Language (DSL) · Visual notation · Cognitive effectiveness
1 Introduction Creating a domain-specific language (DSL) [1] is one of the best options as regards defining new modelling languages and implementing the principles of model-driven engineering (MDE) [2]. The fact that the models can mitigate the Communicated by Richard Freeman Paige.
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Juan M. Vara [email protected] David Granada [email protected] Mercedes Merayo [email protected] https://antares.sip.ucm.es/mercedes/ Esperanza Marcos [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/emarcosmartinez/
1
Kybele Research Group, Rey Juan Carlos University, Calle Tulipán S/N, 28933 Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
2
Faculty of Computer Science, Complutense University of Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain
differences between the various stakeholders involved in the development of digital products and the DSLs are targeted towards a particular domain contributes to ease of use, increases their expressiveness and ultimately shortens the distance between the different types of users of DSLs [3,4]. Given that the two basic principles of the MDE are those of enhancing the role of models and raising the level
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