A dialog-oriented user interface generation mechanism

Abstract

Nowadays, for GUI application development, there are a number of interface builders, which make it possible for the user to create user interfaces easily, and UIMSs, which help to specify and design user interfaces. However, interface builders lack the ability to select appropriate interaction items for a specific application, and UIMSs have little support for low-cost implementation techniques, because they have concentrated on the description technique. To solve these problems, we describe an approach to support both design and implementation activities in a GUI application development by generating a default interface from the described dialog and by customizing the generated interface interactively using an interface builder. This enables us to reduce development costs by supporting GUI development from the earliest stage and by excluding the necessity of specifying and preparing design rules for the presentation style.