An Easily Extensible Toolset for Tabular Mathematical Expressions

We describe the design of an open ended set of tools for manipulating multi-dimensional tabular expressions. The heart of the toolset is a set of modules that makes it possible to add new tools to the toolset without having detailed knowledge of the other tools. This set of modules, the Tool Integration Framework, supports new and existing tools by providing abstract communication interfaces. The framework that we describe has proven to be a practical approach to building an extensible set of tools.