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Reseach Article

BioPCD - A Language for GUI Development Requiring a Minimal Skill Set

by Graham Gm Alvare, Abiel Roche-lima, Brian Fristensky
International Journal of Computer Applications
Foundation of Computer Science (FCS), NY, USA
Volume 57 - Number 6
Year of Publication: 2012
Authors: Graham Gm Alvare, Abiel Roche-lima, Brian Fristensky
10.5120/9117-3273

Graham Gm Alvare, Abiel Roche-lima, Brian Fristensky . BioPCD - A Language for GUI Development Requiring a Minimal Skill Set. International Journal of Computer Applications. 57, 6 ( November 2012), 9-16. DOI=10.5120/9117-3273

@article{ 10.5120/9117-3273,
author = { Graham Gm Alvare, Abiel Roche-lima, Brian Fristensky },
title = { BioPCD - A Language for GUI Development Requiring a Minimal Skill Set },
journal = { International Journal of Computer Applications },
issue_date = { November 2012 },
volume = { 57 },
number = { 6 },
month = { November },
year = { 2012 },
issn = { 0975-8887 },
pages = { 9-16 },
numpages = {9},
url = { https://ijcaonline.org/archives/volume57/number6/9117-3273/ },
doi = { 10.5120/9117-3273 },
publisher = {Foundation of Computer Science (FCS), NY, USA},
address = {New York, USA}
}
%0 Journal Article
%1 2024-02-06T20:59:43.268181+05:30
%A Graham Gm Alvare
%A Abiel Roche-lima
%A Brian Fristensky
%T BioPCD - A Language for GUI Development Requiring a Minimal Skill Set
%J International Journal of Computer Applications
%@ 0975-8887
%V 57
%N 6
%P 9-16
%D 2012
%I Foundation of Computer Science (FCS), NY, USA
Abstract

BioPCD is a new language whose purpose is to simplify the creation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) by biologists with minimal programming skills. The first step in developing BioPCD was to create a minimal superset of the language referred to as PCD (Pythonesque Command Description). PCD defines the core of terminals and high-level non-terminals required to describe data of almost any type. BioPCD adds to PCD the constructs necessary to describe GUI components and the syntax for executing system commands. BioPCD is implemented using JavaCC to convert the grammar into code. BioPCD is designed to be terse and readable and simple enough to be learned by copying and modifying existing BioPCD files. We demonstrate that BioPCD can easily be used to generate GUIs for existing command line programs. Although BioPCD was designed to make it easier to run bioinformatics programs, it could be used in any domain in which many useful command line programs exist that do not have GUI interfaces.

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Index Terms

Computer Science
Information Sciences

Keywords

Graphical User Interfaces Languages Formal grammar Human-Computer Interaction Computational Biology Bioinformatics