undefined | unit 6 software tools

UNIT - 6

Software Tools

Q1) Explain Software tools for program development?

A1)

A programming tool or software development tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs that can be combined together to accomplish a task, much as one might use multiple hand tools to fix a physical object.

The history of software tools began with the first computers in the early 1950s that used linkers, loaders, and control programs. Tools became famous with Unix in the early 1970s with tools like grep, awk and make that were meant to be combined flexibly with pipes. The term "software tools" came from the book of the same name by Brian Kernighan and P. J. Plauger.

Tools were originally simple and light weight. As some tools have been maintained, they have been integrated into more powerful integrated development environments (IDEs). These environments consolidate functionality into one place, sometimes increasing simplicity and productivity, other times sacrificing flexibility and extensibility. The workflow of IDEs is routinely contrasted with alternative approaches, such as the use of UNIX shell tools with text editors like Vim and Emacs

Software development tools can be roughly divided into the following categories:

1) Performance analysis tools

2) Debugging tools

3) Static analysis and formal verification tools

4) Correctness checking tools

5) Memory usage tools

6) Application builds tools

7) Integrated development environment

Software Development Tools also called Programming Tools, Integrated Development Tools, Software Development Kits, Software Developer's Kits, Design Tools, Application Development Software, Application Deployment Tools, Application Development Tools, SDK, Development Tools, Tools, Software Engineering Tools, Applications Frameworks, Development Kits, Program Development Tools, IT Tools, Frameworks, Software Tools, and Information Technology Tools.

A software developer's kit (SDK) is a set of programs used by a computer programmer to write application programs. Typically, an SDK includes a visual screen builder, an editor, a compiler, a linker, and sometimes other facilities. The term is used by Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and a number of other companies.This term is sometimes seen as software development kit.

Q2) Explain Editors and its types?

A2)

Editors or text editors are software programs that enable the user to create and edit text files. In the field of programming, the term editor usually refers to source code editors that include many special features for writing and editing code. Notepad, Wordpad are some of the common editors used on Windows OS and vi, emacs, Jed, pico are the editors on UNIX OS. Features normally associated with text editors are — moving the cursor, deleting, replacing, pasting, finding, finding and replacing, saving etc.

Types of Editors
Therre are generally five types of editors as described below:

Line editor: In this, you can only edit one line at a time or an integral number of lines. You cannot have a free-flowing sequence of characters. It will take care of only one line.
Ex : Teleprinter, edlin, teco

Stream editors: In this type of editors, the file is treated as continuous flow or sequence of characters instead of line numbers, which means here you can type paragraphs.
Ex : sed editor in UNIX

Screen editors: In this type of editors, the user is able to see the cursor on the screen and can make a copy, cut, paste operation easily. It is very easy to use mouse pointer.
Ex : vi, emacs, Notepad

Word Processor: Overcoming the limitations of screen editors, it allows one to use some format to insert images, files, videos, use font, size, style features. It majorly focuses on Natural language.

Structure Editor: Structure editor focuses on programming languages. It provides features to write and edit source code.
Ex : Netbeans IDE, gEdit.

Q3) Explain Some other editors in brief?

A3)

Full Screen Editors: In computers, a full-screen editor or distraction-free editor is a text editor that occupies full display with the purpose of sidelining the user from the OS and the other applications. It helps the user to focus on writing only and do not get distracted by the other applications and the cluttered interface. Often fullscreen editors has a dark background and a text field with a light colored text. They include customizable interfaces and feature like word count.
Ex : Acme, Coderoom, FocusWriter

Multiple Window Editor: Multiple window editor allows you to work on more than one file one file at a time and cut and paste text from file into another via yanking and putting. The two fundamental concepts that lie behind multi-window editors are buffer and windows.

Buffer: Buffer holds the text to be edited. The text may come from a file or a brand new text that you want to write on a file. A file only has one buffer associated with it.

Windows: Windows provides a view to the buffer to see what the buffer holds and edit and modify it. A buffer may have multiple windows. Any changes made in any of the windows will be reflected in all other windows associated with the same buffer. Once the last window associated with a buffer is closed, the file gets hidden. But if you have made any changes to the buffer and not have written them into the disk, it may not allow you to close the window.

DOS-Editor: MS-DOS editor or sometimes also known as just edit is a character based text editor that comes with MS-DOS and a 32-bit version of windows. Previously, it was QBASIC running in editor mode but after DOS-7, it became a standalone program. It is also used as a substitute for Notepad since notepad can work only on small files, DOS editor can work on around 66, 257 lines and up to 5 MB file size. It has features like a customizable color theme, it can open up to 9 files at a time, it can open files in binary mode.

VI editor: The vi editor (short name for the visual editor) is a screen editor which is available in UNIX OS. Vi has no menus instead it uses a combination of keystrokes to accomplish tasks. An improved version of vi is vim(vi improved). Vi editor is usually available in all versions of UNIX OS, its implementation is very easy, it requires only a few resources and it is more user-friendly.

Online Editors: Online text editors is an interface for editing the texts within a web browser. It aims to reduce the efforts made by the user by directly editing and updating into a valid HTML markup language. Internet Explorer added first the feature of “design mode”. The design mode allows the user to edit their document and it also allows the use of the cursor to do the editing.
Ex : CKEditor, SnapEditor, designmode by Internet Explorer.

Q4) Explain Editing Process?

A4)

We all by now understand that editors are the program which is used to create, edit and modify a document. A document may include some images, files, text, equations, and diagrams as well. But we will be limited to text editors only whose main elements are character strings.
The document editing process mainly compromises of the following four tasks :

The part of the document to edited or modifies is selected.

determining how to format this lines on view and how to display it.

Specify and execute the operations that modify the document.

Update the view properly.

The above steps include filtering, formatting, and traveling.

Formatting : Visibility on display screen.

Filtering : Finding out the main/important subset.

Traveling : Locating the area of interest.

User Interface of editors: The user interface of editors typically means the input, output and the interaction language. The input devices are used to enter text, data into a document or to process commands. The output devices are used to display the edited form of the document and the results of the operation/commands executed. The interaction language provides the interaction with the editor.

Input Devices : Input devices are generally divided as text input, button devices and locator devices. Text device is a keyboard. Button devices are special function keys. The locator devices include the mouse. There are special voice devices as well which writes into ext whatever you speak.

Output Devices : TFT monitors, Printers, Teletypewriters, Cathode ray tube technology, Advanced CRT terminals.

Interaction language : The interaction language could be, typing oriented or text command-oriented or could be menu oriented user interface as well. Typing or text command-oriented interaction language is very old used with the oldest editors, in the form of commands, use of functions and control keys etc. Menu oriented interface has a menu with the set of multiple choice of text strings. The display area is limited and the menus can be turned on/off by the user.

Q5) What is Editor Structure?

A5)

The command language processor accepts commands, performs functions such as editing and viewing. It involves traveling, editing, viewing and display. Editing operations are specified by the user and display operations are specified by the editor. Traveling and viewing components are invoked by the editor or the user itself during the operations.

Editing component is a module dealing with editing tasks. The current editing area is determined by the current editing pointer associated with the editing component. When editing command is made, the editing component calls the editing filter, generates a new editing buffer. Editing buffer contains the document to be edited at the current editor pointer location.
In viewing a document, the start of the area to be viewed is determined by the current viewing pointer. Viewing component is a collection of modules used to see the next view. Current viewing can be made to set or reset depending upon the last operation.
When display needs to be updated, the viewing component invokes the viewing filter, generates a new buffer and it contains the document to be viewed using the current view buffer. Then the viewing buffer is pass to the display component which produces the display by buffer mapping. The editing and viewing buffers may be identical or completely disjoint. The editing and viewing buffers can also partially overlap or can be contained one within the another. The component of the editor interacts with the document from the user on two levels: main memory and the disk files system.

Q6) Define Debug monitors?

A6)

Debug monitors give debugging support for a program. A debug monitor executes the program being debugged in its own control thereby giving execution efficiency throughout debugging. There are debug monitors which are language independent and can handle programs written in several languages. For illustration-DEC-10.

Debug monitor give the following facilities for dynamic debugging:

1. Setting breakpoints into the program

2. Initiating a debug conversation while control reaches a breakpoint.

3. Displaying variable's values

4. Assigning new values to variables.

5. Testing in defined assertions and predicates including program variables.

Q7) Explain in detail Programming Environments?

A7)

Though Environment Setup is not an element of any Programming Language, it is the first step to be followed before setting on to write a program.

When we say Environment Setup, it simply implies a base on top of which we can do our programming. Thus, we need to have the required software setup, i.e., installation on our PC which will be used to write computer programs, compile, and execute them. For example, if you need to browse Internet, then you need the following setup on your machine −

A working Internet connection to connect to the Internet

A Web browser such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, etc.

If you are a PC user, then you will recognize the following screenshot, which we have taken from the Internet Explorer while browsing tutorialspoint.com.

Similarly, you will need the following setup to start with programming using any programming language.

A text editor to create computer programs.

A compiler to compile the programs into binary format.

An interpreter to execute the programs directly.

In case you don’t have sufficient exposure to computers, you will not be able to set up either of these software. So, we suggest you take the help from any technical person around you to set up the programming environment on your machine from where you can start. But for you, it is important to understand what these items are.

Text Editor

A text editor is a software that is used to write computer programs. Your Windows machine must have a Notepad, which can be used to type programs. You can launch it by following these steps −

Start Icon → All Programs → Accessories → Notepad → Mouse Click on Notepad

It will launch Notepad with the following window −

Notepad

You can use this software to type your computer program and save it in a file at any location. You can download and install other good editors like Notepad++, which is freely available.

If you are a Mac user, then you will have TextEdit or you can install some other commercial editor like BBEdit to start with.

Compiler

You write your computer program using your favorite programming language and save it in a text file called the program file.

Now let us try to get a little more detail on how the computer understands a program written by you using a programming language. Actually, the computer cannot understand your program directly given in the text format, so we need to convert this program in a binary format, which can be understood by the computer.

The conversion from text program to binary file is done by another software called Compiler and this process of conversion from text formatted program to binary format file is called program compilation. Finally, you can execute binary file to perform the programmed task.

We are not going into the details of a compiler and the different phases of compilation.

The following flow diagram gives an illustration of the process −

Compiler

So, if you are going to write your program in any such language, which needs compilation like C, C++, Java and Pascal, etc., then you will need to install their compilers before you start programming.

Interpreter

We just discussed about compilers and the compilation process. Compilers are required in case you are going to write your program in a programming language that needs to be compiled into binary format before its execution.

There are other programming languages such as Python, PHP, and Perl, which do not need any compilation into binary format, rather an interpreter can be used to read such programs line by line and execute them directly without any further conversion.

Interpreter

So, if you are going to write your programs in PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc., then you will need to install their interpreters before you start programming.

Online Compilation

If you are not able to set up any editor, compiler, or interpreter on your machine, then tutorialspoint.com provides a facility to compile and run almost all the programs online with an ease of a single click.

So do not worry and let's proceed further to have a thrilling experience to become a computer programmer in simple and easy steps.

Q8) Explain User interfaces?

A8)

User interface is the front-end application view to which user interacts in order to use the software. User can manipulate and control the software as well as hardware by means of user interface. Today, user interface is found at almost every place where digital technology exists, right from computers, mobile phones, cars, music players, airplanes, ships etc.

User interface is part of software and is designed such a way that it is expected to provide the user insight of the software. UI provides fundamental platform for human-computer interaction.

UI can be graphical, text-based, audio-video based, depending upon the underlying hardware and software combination. UI can be hardware or software or a combination of both.

The software becomes more popular if its user interface is:

Attractive

Simple to use

Responsive in short time

Clear to understand

Consistent on all interfacing screens

UI is broadly divided into two categories:

Command Line Interface

Graphical User Interface

Command Line Interface (CLI)

CLI has been a great tool of interaction with computers until the video display monitors came into existence. CLI is first choice of many technical users and programmers. CLI is minimum interface a software can provide to its users.

CLI provides a command prompt, the place where the user types the command and feeds to the system. The user needs to remember the syntax of command and its use. Earlier CLI were not programmed to handle the user errors effectively.

A command is a text-based reference to set of instructions, which are expected to be executed by the system. There are methods like macros, scripts that make it easy for the user to operate.

CLI uses less amount of computer resource as compared to GUI.

Q9)What are the Application specific GUI components?

A9)

A GUI of an application contains one or more of the listed GUI elements:

Application Window - Most application windows uses the constructs supplied by operating systems but many use their own customer created windows to contain the contents of application.

Dialogue Box - It is a child window that contains message for the user and request for some action to be taken. For Example: Application generate a dialogue to get confirmation from user to delete a file.

Dialogue Box

Text-Box - Provides an area for user to type and enter text-based data.

Buttons - They imitate real life buttons and are used to submit inputs to the software.

Radio-button

Radio-button - Displays available options for selection. Only one can be selected among all offered.

Check-box - Functions similar to list-box. When an option is selected, the box is marked as checked. Multiple options represented by check boxes can be selected.

List-box - Provides list of available items for selection. More than one item can be selected.

List-box

Other impressive GUI components are:

Sliders

Combo-box

Data-grid

Drop-down list

Q10) Explain User Interface Golden rules?

A10)

The following rules are mentioned to be the golden rules for GUI design, described by Shneiderman and Plaisant in their book (Designing the User Interface).

Strive for consistency - Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar situations. Identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens. Consistent commands should be employed throughout.

Enable frequent users to use short-cuts - The user’s desire to reduce the number of interactions increases with the frequency of use. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.

Offer informative feedback - For every operator action, there should be some system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response must be modest, while for infrequent and major actions, the response must be more substantial.

Design dialog to yield closure - Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and this indicates that the way ahead is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.

Offer simple error handling - As much as possible, design the system so the user will not make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect it and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.

Permit easy reversal of actions - This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that errors can be undone. Easy reversal of actions encourages exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete group of actions.

Support internal locus of control - Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.

Reduce short-term memory load - The limitation of human information processing in short-term memory requires the displays to be kept simple, multiple page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions.

Sign Up