A Customizing Environment for User Interfaces based on Application Semantics

图形用户界面（GUI）已经被广泛接受，并且已经开发了称为GUI构建器的支持GUI编程的各种软件工具。GUI构建器是基于GUI小部件设计的，GUI小部件是用作通用GUI组件的设计对象。GUI构建器非常成功地从GUI元素构建GUI，但不适合根据用户的需求修改现有GUI，即，在这项研究中，我们定义了一个新的编程模型的GUI开发。该模型包括基于应用语义的GUI构件定义和两阶段编程过程两个方面。GUI组件被称为用户界面对象（UIO），它从两个方面进行定义，即给出UIO功能定义的抽象描述和给出UIO物理结构的具体描述。应用程序语义与物理结构分开给出，我们可以定义一组抽象描述相同而具体描述不同的UIO。两阶段编程过程由功能设计阶段（FDP）和可视化设计阶段（VDP）组成，以定义和验证UIO的功能定义（即，抽象描述）以及定义和/或修改UIO的外观和感觉（即，具体描述）。我们已经开发了一个GUI开发工具基于此编程模型。该工具由FDP功能生成器、VDP可视化设计生成器和用于存储和管理UIO的UIO库三部分组成。

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been widely accepted, and various software tools to support GUI programming called GUI builders have been developed. The GUI builders are designed based on GUI widgets which are designed objects used as universal GUI components. The GUI builders are quite successful to build GUIs from GUI elements but are not suitable to modify existing GUIs in accordance with user's requirements, i.e., customization.In this research, we have defined a new programming model for GUI development. The model has two aspects, which are definition of GUI components based on application semantics and two phase programming process. A GUI component, which is called a User Interface Object (UIO), is defined in two aspects, which are the abstract description that gives functional definition of the UIO and the concrete description that gives physical structure of the UIO.Since the functional definition, i.e., application semantics, is given separately from the physical structure, we can define a set of UIOs which has the same abstract description and differs in their concrete description. The two phase programming process consists of the functional design phase (FDP) and the visual design phase (VDP) to define and verify functional definition of a UIO (i.e., abstract description) and to define and/or modify look-and-feel of a UIO (i.e., a concrete description), respectively. We have developed a GUI development tool based on this programming model. The tool consists of three components, which are the function builder for FDP,visual the design builder for VDP and the UIO-base to store and manage UIOs.