Freon: An Open Web Native Language Workbench

Abstract

Freon (formerly called ProjectIt) is a language workbench that generates a set of tools to support a given domain specific modeling language (DSL). The most outstanding tool is a web-based projectional editor, but also included are a scoper, typer, validator, parser, unparser, and a JSON exporter/importer. Because DSLs have (sometimes very) different requirements, we do not assume Freon to be the one tool that can meet all these requirements. Instead the architecture of the generated tool-set supports language designers to extend and adapt it in several different ways. In this paper we do not focus on the functionality of Freon itself, or on any of the generated tools, but on the flexibility that the chosen architecture delivers.