"3D-PP": Visual Programming System with Three-Dimensional Representation

This paper describes a method to manage a large scale visual program for a visual programming system. The conventional two-dimensional visual programming systems have a limitation on their expression of program structure. We implement a new general-purpose three-dimensional visual programming system "3D-PP" to make visual programs more expressive. We apply the direct manipulation to operate three-dimensional program elements. Programmers can describe a large scale visual program in an intuitive manner. The programmers can also execute the program with animated representation. Keywords 3-D computer human interaction, Direct manipulation, Concurrent logic programming, Visualization of complex data structures, Animated presentation. Problems of the Two-Dimensional Visual Programming Systems The conventional visual programming systems mainly focused on two-dimensional pictorial programming [2, 5, 20]. A big problem is that two-dimensional visual programming systems fail to manage a lo..