An Integrated Programming Environment Based on Hypertext Structures

Abstract

For a long time it has been argued that the right kind of representation can provide insight and understanding for a problem. Believing in the general hypothesis that the limitations of our thoughts are all too often identical with the limits of our imagination and visualization capabilities, we have developed an integrated software engineering environment based on the Prolog programming language.

In the approach described below we are trying to support the development of an integrated Prolog programming environment by the special features of our hypertext system KnowS. Beyond these features are typed links, node classes, and transfer modules allowing dataflow between several components. But a program is not only a static object. To study the details of a program, we really have to see it in operation. Therefore we also provide animation of program execution. We are convinced that our integrated approach of managing sources of different kinds of information, supporting their structuring and the facility to maintain a Prolog program by hypertext nodes and links is an important step to the integration of software engineering environments and hypertext systems.