This semester we will be working on designing and implementing an interactive graphics programming language. One of the problems of trying to do simple mathematical graphics (say drawing iterations of a space-filling curve) on the X-terminals is the extreme amount of general setup which needs to be done. Writing direct calls to the Xlib routines is overwhelming and even the toolkits can be hard to master. It seems that there would be a use for a language without the full generality of the X-toolkits, but with the ability to create simple color graphic applications.

During the semester we will extend the preliminary design of such a language and implement the language as a compiler which generates C code. The course will begin with an overview of X graphics programming. As usual, we will cover basic concepts of lexical scanning and parsing and learn to use Lex and Yacc to help implement our compiler.