Non-intrusive error reporting : one use of interactive color displays within software environments

Within many software development systems, the location and correction of errors can be extremely time consuming for the software engineer. Frequently, a myriad of problems may exist with a single phase of the development process. Even interactive systems can force the engineer to solve errors in order of their detection. Very often, a serious bottleneck arises; the engineer's attention can be taken away from important errors while preceding, possibly lesser problems are resolved. Color displays can provide an extra dimension of information that might be useful for indicating different varieties of errors without forcing their resolution. Even so, constructing tools from scratch to take advantage of color in a truly useful way is expensive and unwise due to the high cost of integration into existing development systems. Instead, the modification of tools already proven within the software development process should be explored. We investigate implementation of color and other mechanisms for non-intrusive error reporting within an existing, well-known development tool. The Cornell Synthesizer Generator is modified to provide both static and dynamic coloring of program entities, as well as extended to make expansion and abbreviation of error information easier to perform.