A visualization tool recording historical data of program comprehension tasks

Abstract

Software visualization has become a major technique in program comprehension. Although many tools visualize the structure, behavior, and evolution of a program, they have no concern with how a tool user has understood it. Moreover, they miss the stuff the user has left through trial-and-error processes of his/her program comprehension task. This paper presents a source code visualization tool called CodeForest. It uses a forest metaphor to depict source code of Java programs. Each tree represents a class within the program and the collection of trees constitutes a three-dimensional forest. CodeForest helps a user to try a large number of combinations of mapping of software metrics on visual parameters. Moreover, it provides two new types of support: leaving notes that memorize the current understanding and insight along with visualized objects, and automatically recording a user's actions under understanding. The left notes and recorded actions might be used as historical data that would be hints accelerating the current comprehension task.