Towards a completely extensible dynamic geometry software with metadata

Abstract

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Dynamic Geometry Software (DGS) are widely accepted as tools for creating and presenting visually rich interactive teaching and learning materials, called dynamic drawings. Dynamic drawings are specified by writing expressions in functional domain-specific languages. Due to wide acceptance of DGS, there has arisen a need for their extensibility, by adding new semantics and visuals. We have developed the SLGeometry dynamic geometry software with a genericized functional language and the corresponding expression evaluator that act as a framework into which specific semantics is embedded in the form of code annotated with metadata. SLGeometry is implemented in C# on the.NET Framework. Although attributes are a preferred mechanism to provide association of declarative information with C# code, they have certain restrictions which limit their application to representing complex structured metadata. By developing a metadata infrastructure which is independent of attributes, we were able to overcome these limitations. Our solution, presented in this work, provides extensibility to simple and complex data types, unary and binary operations, type conversions, functions and visuals, thus enabling developers to seamlessly add new features to SLGeometry by implementing them as C# classes annotated with metadata. It also provides insight into the way a domain specific functional language of dynamic geometry software can be genericized and customized for specific needs by extending or restricting the set of types, operations, type conversions, functions and visuals.