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A large number of software architectures for interactive have been described in literature, like the Seeheim, PAC-Amodeus, and Model-View-Controller architectures. Most of these architectures are based on the traditional view of interactive software, namely the view that an interactive software system can be separated in an application part and a user interface part. The application part contains the functionality of the software -- what the system does -- and the user interface part contains the representation of this functionality to the user(s) of the system. The motivation behind these architectures is to improve, among others, adaptability, portability, complexity handling, and separation of concerns of interactive software. The principle of separating interactive software in application and user interface parts has its merits. It can however lead to serious adaptability problems in software that provides fast, frequent and intensive feedback, in particular semantic feedback. Semantic feedback refers to feedback the system gives to the user concerning the semantics of the application, i.e. the objects that the user perceives and manipulates. In these systems, the boundary between application and user interface becomes less sharp and the semantics of the interface and the application tend to be highly coupled. Examples of such interactive systems are direct manipulation systems, virtual reality systems, and systems with natural language interfaces. The problem of semantic feedback is that it is functionality that has both application and user interface aspects and crosses the application-interface boundary. It requires excessive use of semantic information from the application part and in this way, it compromises the separation of application and user interface con...

: The separation of the user interface portion of a software system from the functional portion is intended to enable the production of tools to deal with the user interface, and to raise the quality and modularity of resulting software systems. One class of such separation tools that have been developed is the User Interface Management System (UIMS). This paper describes the runtime architecture and dialogue model of a particular UIMS named Serpent. Serpent uses existing software systems to create a UIMS based on a structured production model to specify the dialogue, and uses a database approach for communication between its internal layers. The model for the dialogue in Serpent supports simultaneity of subdialogues and presents the dialogue specifier with a model that views data as mapping from the application to the presentation. The database approach for communication between the layers provides a model that application programmers understand well and find easy to use. ...

INGRID is an interactive tool for user interface construction. The tool enforces a specific user interface model that considers both the functional composition of the user interface elements and an object-oriented approach as the fundamental design and development methodology. The implementation of INGRID highlights three main components: a run-time support system for interactive programming (in C++), a toolkit that defines the abstract interfaces to the several components of the UI allowing integration of multiple graphical toolkits, and the user interface of INGRID itself. 1. Introduction As user interfaces (UIs) become more sophisticated and easy to use, they also become harder to create. It is clear that the construction of quality user interfaces requires the existence of an iterative refinement cycle of prototyping and validation. Therefore, interactive and easy to use tools for UI construction must be provided. Also, the definition of an adequate architectural model alo...