Authors: Mauricio Verano Merino and Tijs van der Storm
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE)
Abstract
Block-based programming systems employ a jigsaw metaphor to write programs. They are popular in the domain of programming education (e.g., Scratch), but also used as programming interface for end-users in other domains, such as arts, robotics, and configuration management. In particular, block-based interfaces promise a convenient interface for domain-specific languages (DSLs) for domain experts who might lack a traditional programming education. However, building a block-based environment for a DSL from scratch requires significant effort. This paper presents an approach to engineer block-based language interfaces by reusing existing language artifacts. In particular, we present Kogi, a tool for deriving block-based environments from context-free grammars. We identify and define the abstract structure for describing block-based environments. Kogi transforms a context-free grammar into this structure, which is then generated to a block-based environment based on Google Blockly. The approach is illustrated with four case studies, a DSL for state machines, Sonification Blocks (a DSL for sound synthesis), Pico (a simple programming language), and QL (a DSL for questionnaires). The results show that usable block-based environments can be derived from context-free grammars, and with an order of magnitude reduction in effort.