Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!harrier.ukc.ac.uk!rlh2 From: rlh2@ukc.ac.uk (Richard Hesketh) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Toolkits & User Interface Deevolution Message-ID: <1552@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> Date: 13 Jun 89 09:37:42 GMT References: <2904@portia.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: rlh2@ukc.ac.uk (Richard Hesketh) Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Lines: 89 In article <2904@portia.Stanford.EDU> stergios@Jessica.Stanford.EDU (stergios marinopoulos) writes: >Obviously I am not speaking about a radically new idea here. The Mac >has ResEdit, the Amiga has Power Windows, and the Next has the >Interface Builder. With each of these I can create a *complete* user >interface and not wright one line of code! Not one. This is simply >impossible with the toolkits. Hmm. This depends upon where you draw the line between the User Interface of an application and its core functionality. Many direct manipulation style applications require a very tight cooperation between the core part and user interface. Building this type of user interface with a prototyping system is difficult due to the need to talk to core routines .. some "code" is needed here. Systems like Brad Myers' PERIDOT go some way to the removal of programming in the design of user interfaces however having an "Interface Builder" is not a final solution. User Interface Management Systems have been put forward as a method for building all sorts of user interfaces. However due to the currently incomplete knowledge on the subject of what makes a "good" and usable user interface, they are limited to certain user interface styles and domains. >An interface builder abstracts the specification of the user interface >away from its implementation. It then compiles the specification into >an implementation which can, and I dare say should, take on various >platform characteristics. Current systems exist, as you say on other Windowing environments. Its just a matter of time before these things become available. I too am wondering why no visual user interface editor is currently available. However if you consider the immaturity of the toolkits available (or soon to be available) you'll realize that the problem of user interface design using object-oriented style toolkits is still being investigated. This does not mean however that user interface builders shouldn't be produced right now. DEC has its User Interface Language (UIL) for its DECWindows. Looking at its syntax it reminds me of COBOL which does nothing for the "casual" user interface designer or user who wants to dabble. A more promising example of a user specification language has just been posted to comp.sources.sun which only runs under SunView (pardon my language 8-) its called ToolTool and is a specification language for producing toolkit based user interfaces using user interface components. Whilst this currently only runs under SunView the syntax is not highly dependent on SunView (although the code generated is 8-{). The author, Chuck Musciano (chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com) says he would like to see it ported to other windowing environments, like X (any takers?). If the View2 toolkit, said to be included free with R4 is backwards compatible with existing SunView programs then I guess it should be able to port ToolTool to use this new toolkit? >Lets say you have an application that runs on all windowing systems >and you want to change or add to the behavior of the user interface. >How will you do it? Modify a toolkit by changing or creating a new >widget? Wright this code for each window system? On a particular >window system will you write code for each toolkit? Who will QA all >this work? How many people will it take to add and maintain this? >Big and expensive questions indeed! Take a look at March'89 issue of BYTE which contains a software review of "A Virtual Toolkit for Windows and the Mac" by Ray Valde's. This describes a product called XVT which is basically a library of routines for generating graphical applications that has been ported to MS Windows and the Macintosh. They are currently working on a version for X11, another paper in the April Conference Proceedings of the European Unix Users Group (EUUG) describes this current effort. > >It is time to stop building toolkits interfaces to X and get to the >real productivity problems encountered by application programmers. Yes and No. Carry on refining the toolkit paradigm but also produce user inteface designing systems. I would prefer to see graphical editors and incremental execution environments .. why should we be stuck with grammar definitions when we can use visual languages? >Stergios Marinopoulos >stergios@jessica.stanford.edu Thanks for bringing this up, more needs to be said on the subject of visual, dynamic, user interface builders/editors and the associated support tools. Power-tools for the people 8-) Richard Richard Hesketh : rlh2@ukc.ac.uk ..!mcvax!ukc!rlh2 --- Computing Lab., University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, United Kingdom. Tel: (0227) 764000 ext. 3682