Study of Extension of Functions of Iconic Workspace

图标被广泛应用于用户界面。这个研究项目一直在开发利用图标提供工作空间的图标系统。本研究的目的是探讨符号系统的功能扩展方法，并开发符号系统的应用。(1)图标系统的扩展功能…具有自己的数据和功能的图标是应用程序域中的主要对象。图标系统的扩展是通过添加具有新功能或数据的新图标来实现的。我们开发了一种基于复制的方法来在执行过程中生成新图标，并且还实现了一个具有扩展功能的用户环境。(2)图标系统的用户支持设施…为了提高图标系统的用户友好性，我们提出了一种基于遗传算法的根据用户对图标的操作历史对图标进行重新排列的方法。一种利用该方法将图标自动排列成组以用于作业的图标系统。(3)工作流管理系统…我们开发了一个多用户图标系统来管理工作流和显示任务状态。系统根据组织结构检查异常处理的一致性，而用户则交互式地处理异常。我们还提出了一种通过替换工作流组件来自动改进工作流的方法。(4)标志性的数据检索系统…该系统为用户提供了以试错方式检索显示为图标的数据的便利。我们在用户界面层和数据库层之间引入了组层。该系统可以找到给定组中数据的共同属性，并使数据组具有相同的属性。它还自动提取组之间的关系。

Icons are widely used for user interface. This research project has been developing iconic systems which provide workspace utilizing icons. The purpose of this study is to investigates methods for extending functions of iconic systems and to develop applications of the systems.(1) Extending functions of iconic system ... Icons having own data and functions are primary objects in an application domain. Extension of an iconic system is achieved by adding new icons which have new functions or data. We have developed a copy-based approach to generate new icons during execution, and also implemented a user environment with extention facility.(2) User support facility of iconic system ... In order to improve the user friendliness of an iconic system, we have proposed a method on the basis of Genetic algorithm for rearranging icons in accordance with a history of user's operations of icons. An iconic system utilizing the method an arrange icons into groups to be used in jobs automatically.(3) Workflow management system ... We have developed a multi-user iconic system which manages workflow and displays states of tasks. The system examines consistency of exception handling based on an organization structure, while users handle exceptions interactively. We also have proposed an approach to improving a workflow automatically by replacing workflow components.(4) Iconic data-retrieval system ... This system provides facility for users to retrieve data shown as icons in the way of try-and-error. We introduce a group layr between user-interface and database layrs. The system can find common properties of data in a given group and make groups of data having the same properties. It also extracts relationships among groups automatically.