Specifying Direct anipulation within

Language spectfic editors, since they are cognisant of the syntax and semantics of the programming language they manipulate, -should provide a number of advantages for software developers. Howevel; they have not been widely accepted by software developers for serious soflware de- velopment. In other domains, such as drawing and VLSI design, direct manipulation editors (which are also cog- nisant of the entities they manipulate) have proven to be successful. Consequently, the incorporation of direct ma- ' nipulation into program editors is worthy of investigation. Furthermore, the generation of editors from descriptions of the language to be handled and the editing mechanisms to be used has a number of advantages. Thus, this paper out- lines a technique for specifying direct manipulation editing of programs which is amenable to the generation of lan- guage speciJc editors from a spectfkation of the desired editing mechanisms.