Automatic generation of visualization code for the Connection Machine

A technique for automatically adding graphics code to application programs is described. It has been found that many visualization strategies can be described solely in terms of the productions in the programming language's BNF; therefore, a source-to-source transformation mechanism, whereby a user's nongraphics application can be transformed into a consistently functioning variant that also has graphics display operations methodically inserted, is being implemented. The ultimate goals is to discover principles whereby some clear image of an application's state can be communicated to a user by automatic source code analysis. The initial step has been to focus on a concrete architecture, the Connection Machine (CM), for which a set of high-level display functions has been fixed. Source programs written in C, and containing high-level directives, are passed through a parser and analysis program, which creates a variant program having graphics code installed. The transformation program implemented for the experiments is called CmVis. It has been prototyped using a parser generator called NewYacc, a Yacc-based tool that is enhanced by allowing rewrite rules to be associated with the language's BNF productions.<
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