Milestones In Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series

Is there Room for YACC in a GUI World?

Dr. Steven Johnson, Senior Fellow
The MathWorks, Inc.

February 13, 2004
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Atwater Kent, Room 219
100 Institute Road
Worcester, MA

For Information & Directions call: (508) 831-5357 or visit www.cs.wpi.edu

Abstract

The promise of GUI-based applications is "never having to say 'syntax error'". Early applications carefully crafted what was visible to make sure that everything you could see was active, and what wasn't active was "grey-ed out". Before long, however, standards fell, and "syntax error" is now alive and well in GUI-based applications-it's spelled "beep".

This talk discusses the application of grammar-based techniques to user interface design. By considering "use cases" to be equivalent to rules in a grammar, traditional parsing methods can, in principle, be used to drive an application in an easy-to-specify, extensible manner. Doing this with existing graphics systems is a bit harder, particularly since most GUI systems are based on an "event loop" model that makes GOTOs look well structured. Constraint- based systems may offer some hope here.

Biography

Dr. Johnson has a PhD. in Mathematics, but has spent his entire career in the Computing field. He spent nearly 20 years at AT&T Bell Labs, working with the developers of Unix and C, and is responsible for the Unix commands YACC and Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He then spent 15 years in Silicon Valley startups, most recently at Transmeta. He has also been on the Board of Directors of the Usenix professional association, and the Computer Research Association, and served four years as President of Usenix. Since 2002, he has been a Senior Fellow at The MathWorks, working on tools and techniques for improving the MATLAB language and environment.

Host

Prof. Gary F. Pollice

Refreshments will be served

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