B. Myers. Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 12(2):143-- 177, 1990.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....one might want. Work on improving the techniques behind constraint solutions is an open mathematical problem [28, 4, 9] one that is outside the scope of this thesis. Second, it is an onerous task for the user to manually specify and maintain the constraint networks needed for direct manipulation [35, 31]. Just the internal constraint structure needed to create a cube contains 24 distinct constraint relationships; the number of constraints necessary to specify the relationships between the objects in an average office can be large, and the user may have to make and break them individually in order ....

....Some work has attempted to address this problem. Brad Myers attempts to solve the constraint maintenance problem by having the system try to guess which constraints the user wishes to impose; ideally, this reduces the problem to a matter of the user saying yes or no to the computer s guesses [35]. Unfortunately, answering the computers constant requests for confirmation can still be annoying, and the system will inevitably miss some constraints, which sends the user back to manual entry. Kurlander takes a different approach, allowing the user to feed the system snapshots of the ....

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Myers, B.A. Creating User Interfaces using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints. ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems, 12, 2 (Apr. 1990), pp. 143-177.

.... of tasks, the idea of construction kits and design environments raised special interest over the last years [FischerLemke 88] Especially in the domain of user interface construction and design, interactive programming tools using visual programming techniques have been successfully employed [Myers 90, Myers et al. 90] So called user interface builders can be very helpful for building interfaces by means of direct manipulation, especially as far as visual properties are concerned. However, they are typically restricted to a fixed set of predefined interface elements and mostly are very poor ....

....The layout of an object is based on relations between its position and size and the position and size of its parts. It is controlled by objects, called layouters, which define one directional constraints between attributes of the interaction object and attributes of its parts (cf. Barth 86, Myers 90] Various layouters producing specific kinds of layout are predefined. In the menu example, a distance layouter is used to position the menu entries one below the other; the size of the menu is determined by the position and size of the entries. Presentation: Each visual interaction object ....

B. A. Myers. Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 12(2):143--177, April 1990.

....which is also based on Motif, and OSU [Lewis89] which uses the Macintosh Toolbox. The basic interaction facilities of the Motif widgets are restricted by the predefined parameters of the individual widget classes. There is no easy way to define new interaction techniques such as in Peridot [Myers90a] or Lapidary [Myers89b] To a certain extent this is desirable, because standard objects such as menus should look and behave similar in different applications [OSF90] An important part of a window definition is the dynamic layout that determines, for example, how a window layout changes in ....

....native facilities. A similar ruler model but with general constraints is described in [Hudson90b] The GINA ruler model is more specialized because it only needs to include the functionality of the form widget. The idea of inferring layout parameters from an example is inspired by Peridot [Myers90a]. The GINA interface builder applies this idea to the specific parameters of the Motif widgets. It does not need to ask for confirmation, because all system decisions can easily be changed by direct manipulation. 4 Fig. 2: Main window and palette. Some widgets have already been placed on the ....

Brad A. Myers, Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints, ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 12, 2 (April 1990), pp. 143-177

....variables. For example, the constraint left width = right expresses the relationship that the right side of a rectangle should be located width pixels from the left side of the rectangle. Constraints find use in a great many applications, including spreadsheets, graphical interface toolkits [Myers et al. 1990; Barth 1986; Henry and Hudson 1988; Hudson 1994; Szekely and Myers 1988; Vander Zanden 1988; Myers 1990; Hill et al. 1994] graphical layout systems [Gosling 1983] simulation systems [Borning 1981; Borning and Duisberg 1986] animations [Duisberg 1986] programming languages [Freeman Benson ....

....of a rectangle should be located width pixels from the left side of the rectangle. Constraints find use in a great many applications, including spreadsheets, graphical interface toolkits [Myers et al. 1990; Barth 1986; Henry and Hudson 1988; Hudson 1994; Szekely and Myers 1988; Vander Zanden 1988; Myers 1990; Hill et al. 1994] graphical layout systems [Gosling 1983] simulation systems [Borning 1981; Borning and Duisberg 1986] animations [Duisberg 1986] programming languages [Freeman Benson 1990; Maloney 1991; Hoover 1992] and programming environments [Reps et al. 1983] For instance, they may be ....

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Myers, B. A. 1990. Creating user interfaces using programming-by-example, visual programming, and constraints. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12, 2 (April), 143--177.

....useful techniques for automating graphical editing tasks such as graphical search and replace and a comic strip style graphical history that can be used to compose and generalize graphical macros. Many of these systems also provide some form of inference to automatically make programs more general [6,14,15,16] LESSONS FROM DEVICE LEVEL KEYBOARD MACROS The main design issue for pixel data access is how to process information in pixel form. The strategy used in Triggers III is a generalization of the strategy successfully used in device level keyboard macros. Keyboard macros allow a user to record ....

....The user can focus almost all attention on aspects of the application and task. Although a keyboard macro system can provide these benefits of programming by demonstration, it does not automatically generalize programs, which has been a popular goal for programming by demonstration research [6,14,15,16]. DESIGN OF TRIGGERS III The three lessons from keyboard macros provide the design guidelines for using pixel data access in Triggers III. First, include generic device level data types and operators. Second, allow the user to choose device level operators in meaningful contexts. Finally, ....

Myers, B. Creating user interfaces using programmingby -example, visual programming, and constraints. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 12(2):143-177, April 1990.

....be application specific or may depend on the editing mode. Third, while some associations could readily be described as constraints, our system does not require the rigid formality and associated solution machinery that one would find in a mechanism editor based on an underlying constraint system [11, 4, 10, 8, 6]. A novel feature that emerges naturally from our approach is an automated implicit grouping mechanism; it uses the relationships established between objects as they reposition themselves with respect to their environment. 3.2 Two Phase Approach The generic editing move in an interactive ....

Myers, B.A. Creating User Interfaces using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints. ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems, 12, 2 (Apr. 1990), pp. 143-177.

....it does not support some attractive facilities offered by alternate approaches. For instance, unlike ThingLab [3] the Synthesizer Generator [23] and Pan [2] it does not support declarative specification of the semantics user interfaces; unlike the recent extension to ThingLab [4] and Perdiot [21], it does not offer interactive specification of the semantics of user interfaces; unlike UIDE [13] it does not support evaluation of the user interface or automatic help generation; unlike Chiron [29] GELO [20] and StarLite [5] it does not support programmer defined display procedures; and ....

Brad A. Myers, "Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints, " ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12:2 (April 1990), pp. 143-177.

....constraint systems. Sketchpad is the first GUI system that adopts a local propagation technique called one pass method (it also uses numerical methods on failure of the one pass method) 79] Most systems employ one way constraints, whose output variables are predetermined by programmers [42, 63, 64, 65, 66, 81]. By contrast, Fabrik handles two way constraints, each of which has two potential output [47] and ThingLab [3, 6] and CONSTRAINTS [78] exploit multi way constraints, where each variable can be an output. In the context of local propagation for ordinary systems, researchers have been investigated ....

Myers, B. A., "Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints," ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 12, no. 2, Apr. 1990, pp. 143--177.

.... should respond to input events, and 5) hierarchically compose complex objects from simpler objects [39, 47, 49, 35, 20, 2, 4, 22, 37] Because of their utility, dataflow constraints are now used in a wide variety of interactive applications, including spreadsheets, graphical interface toolkits [35, 2, 20, 27, 46, 47, 36, 34, 22], graphical layout systems [18] simulation systems [3, 4] animations [12] imperative programming languages [14, 33] and programming environments [37] QuickPlan 4 3 Why Multi Output, Multi Way Dataflow Constraints are Important One way constraints handle many aspects of interactive ....

Brad A. Myers. "Creating User Interfaces Using Programming-by-Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12, 2 (April 1990), 143-177. QuickPlan - 55 -

....them to show results of computations. Traditional debuggers and recent program visualization animation systems such as Incense [9] Daisy [4] PROVIDE [8] GELO [7] and Tango [12] display them to explain what a program is doing. Recent user interface development environments such as Peridot [10] and Chiron [14] display them to support active values or active variables program data structures whose displays can be edited to input new values for these data structures. Active values support the construction of direct manipulation user interfaces [11] which allow a user to ....

....context group associated with the pointer type. Program visualization and animation systems such as Incense [9] Daisy [4] PROVIDE [8] GELO [7] and Tango [12] display data structures to allow users to monitor and or understand programs. Some interface development environments such as Peridot [10] and Chiron [14] support the development of user interfaces that display data structures whose presentations can be edited to control the execution of the program. In these systems, it is important to generate eye pleasing presentations of data structures since they are displayed over extended ....

Brad A. Myers, Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12(2) pp. 143-177 (April 1990).

....users to manipulate graphical objects directly. The interactive graph layout system[9] employs hierarchical layout algorithms with constraints users can emphasize a certain part in a large graph by employing the most suitable layout algorithm for that part. Many UIMS s, including Peridot[19, 18], Garnet[21, 22] Penguims UIMS[10, 11] and Oak[26] employ constraints to represent widgets location, their behavior and handle propagation of values. 7 Conclusion and Future Work We have focused on the difficulty in creating GUI of high level application data. To solve the problem, we propose ....

Myers, B. A.: Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints, ACM Trans. Prog. Lang. Syst., 12 No. 2, pp. 143--177 (1990).

....approach to PBE, which we call interactive PBE, has become the main E mail: fhagiya, blackyg is.s.u tokyo.ac.jp stream of PBE researches. An interactive PBE system interacts with a user and tries to extract as much intension of the user as possible from interaction. Metamouse [3] and Peridot [4] are typical interactive PBE systems. Mondrian [5] and IMAGE [6] are also such systems that were developed quite recently. Most interactive PBE systems developed so far belong to researches in user interface programming or demonstrational programming [7] Those systems generalize temporal ....

....constructs a macro procedure. Mondrian [5] creates macro procedures having figures as parameters. Both systems generalize sequences of editor operations, which can be regarded as computation traces. Boomborg KEISAN, on the other hand, deals with a more general form of computation traces. Peridot [4] makes inference on geometrical constraints among figures drawn by a graphical editor for creating components of user interface. BoomborgKEISAN also recognizes some geometrical relations on textual documents. Peridot asks the user if inferred constraints are correct, but it does not show them ....

Brad A. Myers, "Creating user interfaces using programming by example, visual programming, and constraints", ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 143--177, Apr. 1990.

....our previous work has been how to extend the range of what can be performed by direct manipulation, by allowing more behaviors to be specified by demonstration [17] We have created many systems which have explored various aspects of this problem. A partial list of these systems includes: Peridot [15], Lapidary [34] Tourmaline [16, 35] Marquise [20] Pursuit [14] Silk [10] Topaz [19] and Turquoise [13] Some of these and many other demonstrational systems are described in a recent book [3] Our latest system is Gamut which allows complete games to be created entirely by demonstration ....

Myers, B.A., "Creating User Interfaces Using Programming-by-Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 1990. 12(2): pp. 143-177.

....of the search. Chimera [3] supported graphical histories of operations in a graphics editor, and allowed commands to be selected for scripts, but supported only rudimentary generalizations. There are many previous examples of scripting by demonstration in graphical applications, including Peridot [10], MetaMouse [7] Mondrian [6] Pursuit [9] Gamut [8] etc. but most of these concentrated on inferencing algorithms rather than providing sophisticated controls to users. CONCLUSIONS Topaz allows the user to construct sophisticated scripts by demonstrating the desired commands and then ....

Myers, B.A., "Creating User Interfaces Using Programmingby -Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 1990. 12(2): pp. 143-177.

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B. Myers. Creating User Interfaces Using Programming by Example, Visual Programming, and Constraints. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 12(2):143-- 177, 1990.

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