Thursday, 01 January 2009

• Visual Programming Language

      The programming language from which the users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically not by specifying them tectually is known as "visual programming language (VPL)". A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation.
  
      Many VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows," where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations. It is also may be classified according to the type and extent of visual expression used, into icon-based languages, form-based languages, and diagram languages. According to some specific spatial grammer the Visual programming environments provide graphical or iconic elements which can be manipulated by users in an interactive way for program construction.
  
      A visually transformed language is a non-visual language with a superimposed visual representation. Naturally visual languages have an inherent visual expression for which there is no obvious textual equivalent.
   
      Current developments try to integrate the visual programming approach with dataflow programming languages to either have immediate access to the program state resulting in online debugging or automatic program generation and documentation.  
  
      Microsoft Visual Studio and the languages it encompasses are commonly confused to be but are not visual programming languages. All of these languages are textual and not graphical. MS Visual Studio is a visual programming environment, but not a visual programming language hence the confusion. 
  

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