Generalizing the Extensibility of a Dynamic GeometrySoftware

Abstract

Abstract. Plug-and-play visual components in a Dynamic Geometry Software (DGS) enable development of visuallyattractive, rich and highly interactive dynamic drawings. We are developing SLGeometry, a DGS that contains a customprogramming language, a computer algebra system (CAS engine) and a graphics subsystem. The basic extensibilityframework on SLGeometry supports dynamic addition of new functions from attribute annotated classes that implementruntime metadata registration in code. We present a general plug-in framework for dynamic importing of arbitrarySilverlight user interface (UI) controls into SLGeometry at runtime. The CAS engine maintains a metadata storage thatdescribes each imported visual component and enables two-way communication between the expressions stored in theengine and the UI controls on the screen.