Generating Interactive Displays from Declarative Specifications

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This is a continuation of ongoing research into the possibility of automatically generating user interfaces for interactive computer systems. The approach taken is to specify an interface formally as a relation between a source object (such as some information in an application program) and a view object (such as a graphical image on the computer's screen). This relation is implemented as a "filter"--a program which can satisfy some con- straint on the two objects it relates. Filters are bidirectional: if the source changes, the view must be updated; if the view is edited, the system must find a corresponding change to the source to keep the constraint satisfied. In previous work the investigators developed a formal theory of filters and a language for defining user interfaces in such terms. They now seek to refine and extend their ideas and test them in a variety of applications. Success in this project would lead to faster and easier construction of computer systems which are precisely tailored to specific needs and yet uniform in the way they interact with a user. The learning and use of ever more powerful and complex systems would be facilitated.