Thomas W. Reps, Tim Teitelbaum. The Synthesizer Generator. In Proceedings of the first ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments. pages 42-48, ACM, New York, USA, 1984. [doi]
Programs are hierarchical compositions of formulae satisfying structural and extra-structural relationships. A program editor can use knowledge of such relationships to detect and provide immediate feedback about violations of them. The Synthesizer Generator is a tool for creating such editors from language descriptions. An editor designer specifies the desired relationships and the feedback to be given when they are violated, as well as a user interface; from the specification, the Synthesizer Generator creates a full-screen editor for manipulating programs in the language.