Communications of the ACM
On the isomorphism, or lack of it, of representations
Visual language theory
A syntax-directed approach to picture semantics
Visual language theory
Specification and dialogue control of visual interaction through visual rewriting systems
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
Concepts and realization of a diagram editor generator based on hypergraph transformation
Science of Computer Programming - Special issue on applications of graph transformations (GRATRA 2000)
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams
Diagrams '00 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams
Constraint Matching for Diagram Design: Qualitative Visual Languages
Diagrams '00 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams
MetaBuilder: The Diagrammer's Diagrammer
Diagrams '00 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams
Universal Arrow Foundations for Visual Modeling
Diagrams '00 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams
Graph Based Modeling and Implementation with EER / GRAL
ER '96 Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling
A Framework of Syntactic Models for the Implementation of Visual Languages
VL '97 Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (VL '97)
VL '00 Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages (VL'00)
Information Sciences: an International Journal
Defining visual languages for interactive computing
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans
Constructing Meta-CASE Workbenches by Exploiting Visual Language Generators
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Event-based concepts for user-driven visualization
Information Visualization
Twelve years of diagrams research
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing
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Different diagrammatic languages are concrete variants of a core metamodel which specifies the way in which to express relations, and which is the basis for a semantic interpretation. In this paper, we identify families of diagrammatic languages exploiting the notion of metamodel as introduced in UML, i.e. through an abstract syntax, given as a class diagram, and a set of constraints in a logical language. The abstract syntax constrains the types of expressable relations and the types and multiplicities of the participating entities. The constraints express contextual and global properties of the relations and their participants. We propose a set of metamodels describing common types of diagrammatic languages. The advantages of this proposal are manifold: the analysis of constraints in the metamodel can be used to assess the adequacy of a type of language to a domain semantics and it is possible to check whether a concrete notation or syntax complies with the metamodel or introduces unforeseen constraints. Finally, we discuss how this characterisation allows the definition of flexible editors for concrete diagrammatic languages, where a specific editor results from the specialisation of some high-level construction primitives for the relevant family of languages.