A Proposal for a Feature Description Language

To overcome current limitations in capturing user-defined-semantics in a featrue-based model a descrition language is needed, which supports both an automatic and a manual generation of feature classes In this paper, an approach to a specification of a Feature Description Language (FDL) is introduced, which allows to describe features in a declarative way, rather than by a sequential composition of featrue primitives. The main elements in this approach are hierarchically classified information units specifying feature, form-related entities, parameters, and constraints. The main requriements to the FDL are that it has to be an intuitively understandable language and that it has to faciliate the manual specification of features. The presented approach is outlined in detail using a practical example.