A user interface management system for decision support systems

Sunghun Park, Purdue University

Abstract

The recent development of low cost workstations with high resolution bit mapped displays makes it potentially cost effective for Decision Support Systems (DSS) to have Direct Manipulation User Interface (DMUI). DMUI lets end users work with a visual representation of the state of a system that is close to their cognitive model of the system. This kind of DMUI can facilitate end user's exploitation of the DSS capabilities better than a command or menu user interface. In spite of these advantages, many DSSs do without DMUI because it is too expensive to construct. A User Interface Management System (UIMS) is proposed that would work as a tool for building DMUI less expensively. This UIMS is an extension of text based structure editor generators into graphics called a graphics structure editor generator (GSEG). A language, Interface Definition Language (IDL), is defined for a developer to specify application-specific graphics editors, and an environment which supports GSEG is sketched. The interface specification for this UIMS consists of three parts: graphics structure editors (GSEs), dialog windows and event handling routine. The definition of GSE specifies graphics editors and is made of an attribute grammar, a presentation grammar and mapping constraints of two grammars. The attribute grammar defines the structure of underlying objects to be edited. The presentation grammar defines the structure of graphical objects on the display. Mapping constraints relate these two structures together. The definition of dialog windows specifies contexts of user interface. A dialog window is made of several user interface components such as menus, buttons and text areas as well as GSEs. The definition of event handling routine glues two components together: user interface and functionality. Each user interface component in a dialog window generates high level events which are initiated by low level end user's actions (mouse and keyboard events). The event handling routine can bind functionality routines to these events from interface components. The UIMS based on GSEG supports high level abstractions in interface specifications and can generate many different graphics editors with significantly less efforts, compared to current implementation tools available such as graphics packages and window systems. The interface specification in IDL gives a logical view of user interface, that is, "What a user interface should be?" rather than "How a user interface should be implemented?"

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Whinston, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Management|Computer science

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