Content area
In order to develop a systematic approach for icon-oriented system design, 2 important issues must be considered. First, there is a need to develop formal ways of talking about the notion of icons. Second, the notion of a visual language compiler, which is analogous to the compilers commonly used for textual languages, should be explicated. An attempt is made to address these issues through the development of a theory of generalized icons and a visual language compiler. The Syntactic, Interactive, Learning, ICON-oriented-system Compiler (SIL-ICON), a software system for the specification, interpretation, prototyping, and generation of icon-generated systems, consists of: 1. the icon system, 2. the icon dictionary, 3. the operator dictionary, 4. the extended task action grammar, and 5. the icon interpreter. An application example involving the design of a text editor using the Heidelberg Icon Set is described in detail.