An inheritance model for supporting flexible displays of data structures

We have designed an inheritance model that reduces the effort required to define presentations of data structures of programs written in conventional languages. It assumes that the presentation of a data structure is determined by one or more attributes of the data structure; classifies data structures into several groups based on their types, contexts, siblings, ancestors and other properties; and allows an attribute to be defined once for all members of a group. These groups are arranged in multiple intersecting hierarchies, and a subgroup is allowed to inherit attributes from its supergroups(s). This paper motivates, describes, and illustrates our method of grouping values and arranging the value groups in inheritance hierarchies.