Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Interactors and Haggis: Executable specifications for interactive systems

1997; Springer Vienna; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-7091-6878-3_7

0946-2767

Meurig Sage, Chris Johnson,

Logic, programming, and type systems

Executable formal specifications, of interactive systems, allow programmers to both reason about their systems, and test them on users. The feedback provided allows an iterative approach to interface design. We argue that new developments in concurrent functional languages make them ideal for executing specifications. To show this, we make use of Haggis, a concurrent functional graphical toolkit. We describe the development of a highly interactive game, from specification to execution. We start with an agent based specification, making use of the CNUCE LOTOS interactor model. This model provides for both modularity and reasoning power. We, however, make use of a VDM like specification language to describe the internal state of our interactors, and so overcome some of the problems with CNUCE interactors. We then show how this specification can be easily and quickly transformed into executable code, using the Haggis system. This application typifies the dynamic, real-time interfaces that many previous prototyping environments do not support.