Whole Platform Preview at CG2012: neat new graphical notations

At CodeGeneration 2012 we previewed the next major version of the Whole Platform.

One notable change is the new look of the graphical notations.

This post outlines my design goals and provides a few comparative examples.

Notation Design Highlights

• Optimized for visual exploration
• Consistent choice of colors across all of the Whole Core languages
• Reduced verbosity
• Better use of space (in both dimensions)
• Extended use of nested tables to improve readability

To facilitate the comparison with the old version, I show here side-by-side a few screenshots of the language notations that changed the most.

Models DSL

Grammars DSL

Queries DSL (and Commons DSL)

Semantics DSL (and Commons DSL)