<title>Flexible dynamic models for user interfaces</title>

Abstract

This paper describes an approach for a platform-and implementation-independent design of user interfaces using the UIMS idea. It is a result of a detailed examination of object-oriented techniques for program specification and implementation. This analysis leads to a description of the requirements for man-machine interaction from the software-developers point of view. On the other hand, the final user of the whole system has a different view of this system. He needs metaphors of his own world to fulfill his tasks. It's the job of the user interface designer to bring these views together. The approach, described in this paper, helps bringing both kinds of developers together, using a well defined interface with minimal communication overhead.Keywords: graphical user interface, behavior model, dynamic model, interpreter, user interface management system OVERVIEWOne of the most important results in the separation of gui and application is the creation of two different working areas: The user interface designer and the application developer. Both of them have special skills and knowledges, the communication between them is done using a well defined interface. To reach this goal, firstly, a basic system for symbolization and manipulation of structured application defined information is used as a hardware independent platform. UIMS design normally leads to a large communication overhead between UIMS itself and the application: A more important point in the construction of such a system is to give the UIMS as much independence as possible. One of the best ways to solve this problem is to allow the man machine service to handle most parts of the dialogue control itself. For this reason, we have introduced two models in our system Fluids to define the user interface. 5 The static model describes the user interface structure, using the design and placement of their components. 6 The idea of symbolic information visualization is consequently used: Menus are aggregate symbols, composed of buttons, which are symbols too. Picture as the basic class is a container for a set of symbols without any internal relation. From this class are more specific classes derived: Menu, Mask, Table. Additional basic classes are not necessary, because classes with other semantic like Hierarchical Graphs can be constructed using the dynamic model. The complete static model is discussed other papers so that we put our focus on the dynamic or behavior model.