Graphical user interfaces (GUI) provide intuitive and easy means for users to communicate with computers. However, construction of GUI software requires complex programming that is far from being intuitive. Because of the "semantic gap" between the textual application program and its graphical interface, the programmer himself must conceptually maintain the correspondence between the textual programming and the graphical image of the resulting interface. Instead, we propose a programming environment based on the programming by visual example (PBVE) scheme, which allows the GUI designers to "program" visual interfaces for their applications by "drawing" the example visualization of application data with a direct manipulation interface. Our system, TRIP3, realizes this with (1) the bi-directional translation model between the (abstract) application data and the pictorial data of the GUI, and (2) the ability to generate mapping rules for the translation from example application data and ...

The merits of direct manipulation are now widely recognized. However, direct manipulation interfaces incur high cost in their creation. To cope with this problem, we present a model of bidirectional translation between pictures and abstract application data, and a prototype system, TRIP2, based on this model. Using this model, general mapping from abstract data to pictures and from pictures to abstract data is realized merely by giving declarative mapping rules, allowing fast and easy creation of direct manipulation interfaces. We apply the prototype system to the generation of the interfaces for kinship diagrams, Graph Editors, E-R diagrams, and an Othello game.

and Pictorial Data Shin Takahashi Satoshi Matsuoka Akinori Yonezawa 3 Department of Information Science, University of Tokyo 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113 Japan Tomihisa Kamada y Research and Development, ACCESS CO., LTD. 1-7-1 Sarugaku-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101 Japan Abstract The merits of direct manipulation(DM) are now widely recognized. However, DM interfaces incur high cost in their creation. To cope with this problem, we present a model of bi-directional translation between internal abstract data of applications and pictures, and create a prototype system TRIP2 based on this model. Using this model, general mapping from abstract data to pictures, and from pictures to abstract data, is realized merely by giving declarative mapping rules, allowing fast and effortless creation of DM interfaces. We also apply the prototype system to the generation of the interfaces for kinship diagrams, graph diagrams, and an Othello game. keywords : Bi-Directional Translation, Direct m...

Pictorial representations significantly enhance our ability to understand complicated relations and structures, which means that information systems strongly require user interfaces that support the visualization of many kinds of information with a wide variety of graphical forms. At present, however, these difficult visualization problems have not been solved. We present a visualization framework for translating abstract objects and relations, typically represented in textual forms, into pictorial representations, and describe a general visualization interface based on this framework. In our framework, abstract objects and relations are mapped to graphical objects and relations by user-defined mapping rules. The kernel of our visualization process is to determine a layout of graphical objects under geometric constraints. A constraint-based object layout system named COOL has been developed to handle this layout problem. COOL introduces the concept of rigidity of constraints in order to reasonably handle, a set of conflicting constraints by use of the least squares method. As applications of our system, we show the generation of kinship diagrams, list diagrams, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, and entity-relationship diagrams.

A new display scheme is presented in which three-dimensional objects are represented with a much higher degree of user control of the line-drawing format than those in conventional schemes. In this scheme, the attribute of a line is determined not at the time of definition but after the viewing transformation has been applied, taking the shielding environment of the line into consideration. The essential difference between our scheme and conventional hidden-line removal/indication lies in the treatment of the shielding environment. In conventional hidden-line removal/indication, only the visible/invisible information is available for the selection of the attribute of a line. In our scheme, the entire set of surfaces that hide a line can be used to determine the attribute of the line. A much higher degree of freedom in generating pictures is achieved owing to the treatment of the shielding environment. We also describe a system called GRIP, which implements the new scheme.