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Almost as long as there have been user interfaces, there have been special software systems and tools to help design and implement the user interface software. Many of these tools have demonstrated significant productivity gains for programmers, and have become important commercial products. Others have proven less successful at supporting the kinds of user interfaces people want to build. This article discusses the different kinds of user interface software tools, and investigates why some approaches have worked and others have not. Many examples of commercial and research systems are included. Finally, current research directions and open issues in the field are discussed.

One of the main problems in the database area is to define query languages characterized by both high expressive power and ease of use. In this paper, we propose a system to query databases, using diagrams as a standard user interface. The system, called Query by Diagram* (QBD*), makes use of a conceptual data model, a query language on this model and a graphical user interface. The conceptual model is the Entity-Relationship Model; the query language, whose expressive power allows recursive queries, supports visual interaction. The main characteristics of the interface are the ease of use, and the availability of a rich set of primitives for schema selection and query formulation. Furthermore, we compare the expressive power of QBD* and G+, which are the only languages allowing recursive queries to be expressed graphically.

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Suite offers high-level abstractions for developing both single-user and multi-user interfaces. An interactive application in Suite displays data structures to one or more users and asynchronously responds to user modifications to these data structures. Between each application and user is a dialogue manager, which offers the user an interface for manipulating displayed data. Dialogue managers and applications execute in separate address spaces, residing possibly on different computers, such as local workstations and remote hosts....

and Pictorial Data Satoshi Matsuoka Shin Takahashi Tomihisa Kamada 3 Akinori Yonezawa y Department of Information Science, the University of Tokyo 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113 Japan Research and Development, ACCESS CO., LTD. 1-7-1 Sarugaku-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101 Japan Abstract The merits of direct manipulation are now widely recognized. However, direct manipulation interfaces incur high cost in their creation. To cope with this problem, we present a model of bi-directional translation between pictures and abstract application data, and a prototype system TRIP2 based on this model. Using this model, general mapping from abstract data to pictures, and from pictures to abstract data, is realized merely by giving declarative mapping rules, allowing fast and easy creation of direct manipulation interfaces. We apply the prototype system to the generation of the interfaces for kinship diagrams, Graph Editors, E-R diagrams, and an Othello game. Categories and Subject Descriptors:...

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ABSTRACT: The paper addresses the formal specification, design and implementation of the behavioral component of graphical user interfaces. The complex sequences of visual events and actions that constitute dialogs are speci-fied by means of modular, communicating grammars called VEG (Visual Event Grammars), which extend traditional BNF grammars to make them more convenient to model dialogs. A VEG specification is independent of the actual layout of the GUI, but it can easily be integrated with various layout design toolkits. Moreover, a VEG specification may be verified with the model checker SPIN, in order to test consistency and correctness, to detect deadlocks and unreachable states, and also to generate test cases for validation purposes. Efficient code is automatically generated by the VEG toolkit, based on compiler technology. Realistic applica-tions have been specified, verified and implemented, like a Notepad-style editor, a graph construction library and a large real application to medical software. It is also argued that VEG can be used to specify and test voice interfaces and multi-modal dialogs. The major contribution of our work is blending together a set of features coming from GUI design, compilers, software engineering and formal verification. Even though we do not claim novelty in each of the techniques adopted for VEG, they have been united into a toolkit supporting all GUI design phases, i.e., specification, design, verification and validation, linking to applications and coding. 1

ion means the logical separation of the code of a groupware application into the functional core and the user interface part. Development of synchronous groupware is thought to benefit from abstraction. Users take on (sometimes several different) roles in groupware settings. Access rights are often dictated by the roles of the different users. Evidently, groupware tools should strive to aid programmers in tackling such complexities. We also found three surveys on groupware design issues [24, 51, 15] helpful when trying to get an impression of groupware developers' needs. Finally, some results from a closely related field: Researchers working on developing tools for singleuser user interfaces suggest that the following are desirable features of programming languages for implementing such systems [40]: ffl Efficient runtime execution. ffl Fast translation or compilation. ffl Portability to, and availability on, a wide range of platforms. ffl Facilities to support reuse. ffl Strong typ...

Multi-user applications support multiple users performing a related task in a distributed context. This paper describes Weasel, a system for implementing multi-user applications. Weasel is based on the relational view model, in which user interfaces are specified as relations between program data structures and views on a display. These relations are specified in RVL, a high-level, declarative language. Under this model, an application program and a set of RVL specifications are used to generate a multi-user application in which all issues of network communication, concurrency, synchronization, and view customization are handled automatically. These programs have a scalable distribution property, where adding new participants to a session does not greatly degrade over-all system performance. Weasel has been implemented, and was used to generate all examples in this paper.