Making design patterns explicit in FACE: a frame work adaptive composition environment

Tools incorporating design patterns combine the advantage of having a high-abstraction level of describing a system and the possibility of coupling these abstractions to some underlying implementation. Still, all current tools are based on generating source code in which the design patterns become implicit. After that, further extension and adaptation of the software is needed but this can no longer be supported at the same level of abstraction. This paper presents FACE, an environment based on an explicit representation of design patterns, sustaining an incremental development style without abandoning the higher-level design pattern abstraction. A visual composition tool for FACE has been developed in the Self programming language.