arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 2108.03047cs.HC
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以领域为中心的布局、任务和控制流图可视化规范支持

Domain-Centered Support for Layout, Tasks, and Specification for Control Flow Graph Visualization

Sabin Devkota, Matthew P. LeGendre, Adam Kunen, Pascal Aschwanden, Katherine E. Isaacs

摘要:

编译器、性能分析和安全等领域的计算专业人员经常在工作中分析和操作控制流图(CFG)。CFG是描述程序执行中指令的可能排序的有向网络。可视化CFG是开发或调试使用它们的计算方法的常见活动。然而,一般的图形绘制布局,包括经常应用于CFG的分层布局,并不捕获特定于CFG的结构或任务,因此所得到的绘图可能不匹配其受众的需求,特别是对于更复杂的程序。虽然一些算法在指定布局方面提供了灵活性,但它们通常需要这些潜在用户不具备的图形绘制布局和图元的专业知识。为了将特定于领域的CFG绘图带给这些受众,我们开发了CFGConf,这是一个旨在匹配CFG专家抽象级别的库。CFGConf提供了一个JSON接口,可以生成独立的图形,也可以集成到多视图可视化系统中。我们开发了CFGConf通过与专家的交互式设计过程,同时结合从以前的CFG可视化系统,在计算系统会议的CFG绘图惯例的调查,和现有的设计原则符号的经验教训。我们评估CFGConf的表现力,可用性和记谱效率,通过用户研究和说明性的例子。CFG专家能够使用该库来生成领域感知布局,并赞赏该规范的任务感知性质。

英文摘要:

Computing professionals in areas like compilers, performance analysis, and security often analyze and manipulate control flow graphs (CFGs) in their work. CFGs are directed networks that describe possible orderings of instructions in the execution of a program. Visualizing a CFG is a common activity in developing or debugging computational approaches that use them. However, general graph drawing layouts, including the hierarchical ones frequently applied to CFGs, do not capture CFG-specific structures or tasks and thus the resulting drawing may not match the needs of their audience, especially for more complicated programs. While several algorithms offer flexibility in specifying the layout, they often require expertise with graph drawing layouts and primitives that these potential users do not have. To bring domain-specific CFG drawing to this audience, we develop CFGConf, a library designed to match the abstraction level of CFG experts. CFGConf provides a JSON interface that produces drawings that can stand-alone or be integrated into multi-view visualization systems. We developed CFGConf through an interactive design process with experts while incorporating lessons learned from previous CFG visualization systems, a survey of CFG drawing conventions in computing systems conferences, and existing design principles for notations. We evaluate CFGConf in terms of expressiveness, usability, and notational efficiency through a user study and illustrative examples. CFG experts were able to use the library to produce the domain-aware layouts and appreciated the task-aware nature of the specification.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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