Programmable applications: interpreter meets interface

Current fashion in "user-friendly" software design tends to place an over-reliance on direct manipulation interfaces. To be truly expressive (and thus truly user-friendly), applications need both learnable interfaces and domain-enriched languages that are accessible to the user. This paper discusses some of the design issues that arise in the creation of such programmable applications. As an example, we present "SchemePaint," a graphics application that combines a MacPaint-like interface with an interpreter for (a "graphics-enriched") Scheme.

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