Generating diagram editors providing free-hand editing as well as syntax-directed editing

Abstract. Diagram editors which are tailored to a specific diagram language typically support either syntax-directed editing or free-hand editing, i.e., the user is either restricted to a collection of predefined editing operations, or he is not restricted at all, but misses the convenience of such complex editing operations. This paper proposes a concept for incorporating both modes into one editor in order to get the combined advantages. This proposal extends work on free-hand editors which are generated from a formal hypergraph grammar specification by the diagram editor generator DiaGen.