Interpretation of icon overlapping in iconic programming

Abstract
In recent years, the demand for the development of computer programming environments which are easy to use even for non-experts has increased. The previously developed iconic programming system, HI-VISUAL, is one of the trials towards realization of such friendly programming environments. In HI-VISUAL, program construction is carried out by arranging and overlapping icons on the screen. Here icons represent objects actually existing in the real world, and the behavior of an icon is determined at the time of programming by being combined with another icon. An extension of HI-VISUAL programming facilities is investigated. First, the authors present the facilities for programming by overlapping multiple icons. Next, support for the interpretation of semantic behavior of overlapped icons is proposed. The interpretation is carried out by utilizing the information about the spatial structure of overlapped icons and/or the history of icon handling. Implementational issues of the system are discussed extensively.

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