framework

We describe a set of application frameworks designed especially to support information-intensive applications in complex domains, where the visual organization of an application's information is critical. Our frameworks, called visual formalisms, provide the semantic structures and editing operations, as well as the visual layout algorithms, needed to create a complete application. Examples of visual formalisms include tables, panels, graphs, and outlines. They are designed to be extended both by programmers, through subclassing, and by end users, through an integrated extension language.