A Graphical Programming Environment?

Here is an interesting proof of concept for a graphical programming language. I'm actually not sure if 'language' is the correct word. It would really be more like a graphical programming environment.



I found out that omnigraffle pro is incredibly scriptable. Through applescript one can have complete knowledge of every object in the document and how each object is connected. So here is a simple hello world 'program' drawn in omnigraffle, and an interpreter written in applescript.

This is clearly a very simple implementation, but it is interesting to think about the possibilities of this kind of graphical language. One of the first features I would like to implement would be an "Abstract" button, which would take a selection of objects and replace them with one small object with the same properties. This abstraction would allow the language to conquer large problems while maintaining its visual simplicity.

Download program and interpreter

MetaBlogger 0.2 is done. Here is a list of new features:

Remembers username and blogid

GUI rearranged, actions moved to menus with keyboard shortcuts

Uploading and Downloading templates works

Better status reports

An actual installer

Here it is for download: MetaBlogger 0.2

A New Metablake.com

Well, it's official. Here is the new metablake.com. The old flash site can still be used to browse old projects. I think this blog style will be much better at organizing my projects. And on that note, here is a pretty fractal from parcel.

Here is the first beta of MetaBlogger. Enjoy!


MetaBlogger 0.1

Note: This xml-rpc code needs to be added to your java classpath. Drag to ~/Library/Java/Extensions

I was so excited when I found out that you could access blogger using xml-rpc commands, that I decided to start working on a little cocoa app that will interface with blogger. It isn't much to look at for the time being, but I definitely plan on developing it further in the near future. Check out this screenshot.

Parcel

Parcel is a two-dimensional graphical processing language designed to simplify the task of producing meaningful representations of data models and simulations for statistical, scientific, and artistic applications. The fundamental object in Parcel is the cel. A cel is defined proportionally to other cels; it can be anything from a pixel to the whole screen depending on context. Furthermore, cels can be nested and tiled within each other. This fundamental data structure allows for unique highlevel, abstract drawing and animation, independent of the underlying graphical implementation.

Here are some sample images:


and documentation:
Reference Manual