Enhancing syntax expressiveness in domain-specific modelling

Domain-specific modelling helps tame the complexity of today's application domains by formalizing concepts and their relationships in modelling languages. While meta-editors are widely-used frameworks for implementing graphical editors for such modelling languages, they are best suitable for defining novel topological notations, i.e., syntaxes where the model layout does not contribute to the model semantics. In contrast, many engineering fields, e.g., railways systems or electrical engineering, use notations that, on the one hand, are standard and, on the other hand, are demanding more expressive power than topological syntaxes. In this paper, we discuss the problem of enhancing the expressiveness of modelling editors towards geometric/positional syntaxes. Several potential solutions are experimentally implemented on the jjodel web-based platform with the aim of identifying challenges and opportunities.