Authors
Nicholas Wilde
Abstract
Sheet based programming languages (spreadsheet applications) are one of the most popular classes of applications on personal computers. Unfortunately, many spreadsheets created by both inexperienced and experienced users are incorrect.
A fundamental reason for this is the independence of the computational structure of a spreadsheet from its visible structure. We define a new sheet-based visual language which attempts to overcome this difficulty by using the visible structure of the spreadsheet as the means of specifying the computational structure - a What You See is What You Compute (WYSIWYC) spreadsheet.
Sample
Our WYSIWYC language overcomes the weaknesses of traditional spreadsheets in the following ways:
- In traditional spreadsheets it is easy to specify a cell reference or range incorrectly, and hard to judge that it is incorrect. With WYSIWYC, the feedback is immediate and obvious.
- Once a cell reference or range has been specified correctly in a particular cell's formula, users often rely on relative copying/replication of cells to build new formula. WYSIWYC relies on standard algebraic notation to denote relative addressing, so no translation needs to be done by the spreadsheet application.
- Incorrect cell references are often difficult to detect within the formulae of spreadsheets, especially when the value calculated is "reasonable," but wrong. With WYSIWYC, feedback is immediate and obvious if a user specifies a range or cell reference incorrectly in an argument subrange.
Publication
1993, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, August
Full article
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