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 com- puter 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 bidirec- tional: 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 construc- tion 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.