6.2 Tool Abstraction Concept

  The idea of the Tool Abstraction Concept (TAC)[Hal94] is shown in Fig.  6.5. The programming languages C, C++, FORTRAN, PASCAL and VLisp are considered implementation domains of an abstract tool, which provides some functionality. A characterization of this tool can be derived from the implementation itself and from some additional formal description. This information can then be used to create an interface for this tool in another target domain.

 
Abbildung 6.5:   Concept of TAC

There is no principal restriction of the scope of a tool abstraction concept and new domains can be added. Tool abstraction (more precisely, abstract formal characterization of tools) is becoming a major field of interest in many areas[Ips90, Cal91, Kle94].

Tool abstraction has two major functionalities in VMake. The first is automatic language binding between C, C++, FORTRAN and VLisp (see Appendix B). The second one is generating reference manuals automatically and building documentation out of predefined documentation atoms. TAC works in two steps:

1. Extract the information from source file(s).
2. Generate the language binding or reference documentation.

The first step of the binding is defined by the Define-TAC-Interface (see Define-TAC-Interface) and the second step is done by the Create-TAC-Interface (see Create-TAC-Interface). For reference documentation the second step is part of the documentation generation (see Section 6.2.3).

 
• 6.2.1 Extracting Information
  • Parameter documentation
• 6.2.2 Language Binding
  • FORTRAN/C Binding
  • C/FORTRAN Binding
  • C/VLisp Binding
  • C++/VLisp Binding
• 6.2.3 Documentation
  • Documentation Atoms
  • Documentation Isotopes
  • Reference Entries
  • Manuals