A special-purpose language for picture-drawing

Special purpose languages are typically characterized by a type of primitive data and domain-specific operations on this data. One approach to special purpose language design is to embed the data and operations of the language within an existing functional language. The data can be defined using the type constructions provided by the functional language, and the special purpose language theta inherits all of the features of the more general language. In this paper we outline a domain-specific language, FPIC, for the representation of two-dimensional pictures. The primitive data and operations are defined in ML. We outline the operations provided by the language, illustrate the power of the language with examples, and discuss the design process.