Formal Grammar Specifications of User Interface Processes

The benefits and drawbacks of using a formal grammar model to specify a user interface has been the primary focus of this study. In particular, the regular grammar and context-free grammar models have been examined for their relative strengths and weaknesses. The earliest motivation for this study was provided by Dr. James R. VanDoren at TMS Inc. This thesis grew out of a discussion about the difficulties of designing an interface that TMS was working on.Computer Scienc

User Interface Management Systems: A Survey and a Proposed Design

The growth of interactive computing has resulted in increasingly more complex styles of interaction between user and computer. To facilitate the creation of highly interactive systems, the concept of the User Interface Management System (UIMS) has been developed. Following the definition of the term 'UIMS' and a consideration of the putative advantages of the UIMS approach, a number of User Interface Management Systems are examined. This examination focuses in turn on the run-time execution system, the specification notation and the design environment, with a view to establishing the features which an "ideal" UIMS should possess. On the basis of this examination, a proposal for the design of a new UIMS is presented, and progress reported towards the implementation of a prototype based on this design