MASC

1
MASC

• A browser manipulation language by Michael
  Masullo, Christos Angelopoulos, Vaibhav Saharan,
  and Kristina Chodorow

2
Outline

• MASC overview and goals
• Tutorial
• Implementing MASC
• Lessons Learned

3
MASC Overview and goals

• What is MASC and Why make it

4
What is MASC?

• Browser-based webpage manipulation
• Uses the MASC Browser, a fully functional
  graphical web browser
• Contains the MASC Shell, where commands are given
  and results displayed

5
Why make MASC?

• Great for organizing information
• Simple, clean web browser
• Easy access to shell

6
Tutorial

• Putting on the MASC

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Example 1 Bookmark file
( display user's bookmarks add the current
page as a bookmark redisplay list
) bkmrks_file "/home/"USER"/.bookmarks" she
ll(echo "Old bookmark list") ( create bookmarks
file if it doesn't exist ) touch
bkmrks_file shell(cat bkmrks_file
sort) shell(echo "------------") echo -n
"Current page " / ( append current page's
address to the list ) echo / gtgt bkmrks_file (
redisplay ) echo "New bookmark list" cat
bkmrks_file sort echo "------------"
8
Example 2 Bookmark Array
array goodLinks5 j0 while (jlt5) goodLinksj"
" jj1 j0 newSite"www.televisionwithoutpity.c
om" while(jlt5) if(goodLinksj) goodLinksj
newSite j0 break else if(goodLinksjnewSi
te) echo "Already Entered" j0 break else
jj1
9
Implementation

• Making the language MASC

10
Tools Used

• ANTLR
• Eclipse (with plug-ins)
• Subversion
• Lobo

11
Language Diagram
12
Lessons Learned

• What to do and what to be wary of when designing
  a compiler

13
Lessons Learned

• Dont bother programming anything in or for
  Windows. Its not worth it.
• Making a Firefox plug-in for the MASC shell would
  have been easyif we wrote everything in
  JavaScript.
• A lot of things are funnier at 3 in the morning.