Object-oriented specification of user interfaces

This paper presents an object-oriented approach for the specification of graphical user interfaces. Specification starts with the analysis of the end user's operations. The user interface is then designed on the basis of this analysis. Operation analysis is followed by structure and component specification which presents the dialogue structure of the application and the contents of each dialogue. Visualization produces the final screen layouts, and task specification documents the usage of the user interface for the purpose of creating user's guides. The method presented in this paper makes it easier for a designer to take the end user's needs into account. Still, it does not automatically guarantee good quality user interfaces. The top-down nature of the method allows the designer to concentrate on the most important aspects of the user interface and split the design procedure into manageable pieces. Also, the visibility of the process allows the designer to communicate with other people while specifying the user interface. This paper connects the method with the object-oriented specification of entire applications. It briefly explains the connections with object-oriented analysis and design, and demonstrates how to implement the specified user interface in an object oriented fashion. The approach presented in this paper is being applied in the development of a large network management system with about two million lines of C++ code running in the XII environment. Still, the method does not require the specification being implemented with any specific windowing system. The only requirement is that the user interface is based on graphical elements, such as dialogues, push-buttons and text fields.     

Implementing a user interface management system for existing applications using an object-oriented database tool

Numerous engineering application systems have been developed over the past twenty years, and many of these applications will continue to be used for many years to come. Examples of such applications include CAD Systems, finite-element analysis packages and inspection systems. Because many of these applications were developed before graphical workstations became available, they often have simple command-line user interfaces. Thus, there is a need for a graphical user interface management system (UIMS) that can be used to build point-and-click style interfaces for these existing engineering applications. In this paper we describe such a UIMS, and discuss its implementation using an object-oriented database tool. This UIMS allows users to create and modify user interfaces by editing graphical representations of the interfaces, thus eliminating the need to write code to build or modify an interface. The UIMS is implemented using an object-oriented database tool to take advantage of the data manipulation and storage management capabilities it provides. This approach reduces both the quantity and complexity of the code needed to implement the UIMS. It also allowed the UIMS to be implemented in a minimal amount of time.     

QUICK: a tool for graphical user-interface construction by non-programmers

The last decade has placed the superiority of graphical user interfaces over traditional text-based approaches beyond dispute. In almost all contexts, users have found graphical interfaces easier to learn, faster to use, and less error-prone. However, it has been shown that the creation of powerful graphical interfaces takes up to 80% of the time required to develop an application. In our work, we seek to extend the benefits of graphical interaction to the next layer of computer user—the interface designer. Our work in this area is distinguished from other efforts by two important differences. First, while other efforts focus primarily on the design of standard user interfaces, our approach emphasizes the creation of unique and innovative interfaces by supporting, among other things, arbitrary user-designed graphical representations, direct specification of animation, and digitized sound. Second, our goal is to cater to the nonprogrammer. Thus, we address a challenging trade-off: maximizing power and flexibility in an extremely simple environment. We explore the utility of the prototype object-oriented paradigm, a high-level userinterface language, and a direct-manipulation programming environment in this context.     

An architecture for distributed visualization of technical processes

The goal of the work presented here was to create the prototype of a graphical user interface for process visualization which requires only a fraction of the memory and processing power needed by today's de-facto industry standards for graphical user interfaces. As a result, an application framework for distributed process visualization called ‘Vision’ was developed. This paper describes the architecture of ‘Vision’, which achieved our goals by the consequent use of object-oriented design in the components of the user interface. The system offers a fully functional GUI as a basis, with special capabilities for fail-safe distribution of process-related events within a network of visualization stations. Several basic classes for visualizing process data are included.     

Vu: visual user-interface design

Vu is an interactive visual programming environment, which enables interface designers to create highly interactive, graphical, direct-manipulation-style graphical user interfaces in a very natural manner. The general strategy of vu is to enable the designer to draw the screen display that the end user will see, and to test the interface by performing actions just as the end user would. This is achieved by providing exploratory programming in a highly visual and object-oriented environment. This paper describes the design principles and structure of vu.     

HAGI, a High-level Application/Graphics Interface

HAGI is an object-oriented graphics system developed on top of the X window system. In addition to providing facilities that structured graphics systems such as GKS usually have, HAGI supports a high- level graphics paradigm with the following features:

• + In addition to graphical objects, the system provides a class of application objects with a higher level of abstraction than graphical objects.
• + Graphics manipulation operations can be issued simplyfrom application objects without explicitly referring to specific graphical objects. Thus graphics manipulation appears to be transparent to application programmers.
• + Graphical objects are designed to encompass more semantics, thus are at a level close to the application. For example, they useflexible visual objects to determine their visual appearance.

HAGI provides such a high-level application/graphics interface by maintaining a dependency relationship between graphical objects and application objects.     

无人飞行器伺服系统余度控制接口的设计与实现

介绍了一种在无人飞行器中设计应用的伺服系统余度控制接口,该接口实现了数字总线和模拟量两余度接口控制,可有效提高伺服系统的可靠性和抗干扰能力;分析了无人飞行器机载伺服系统的结构组成和工作模式,选择了CAN总线作为机载数字通讯总线,论述了机载伺服系统余度控制接口的工作原理,同时给出了伺服控制器的硬件接口电路及软件工作流程;实验结果表明余度控制接口工作稳定,控制通道转换平稳,该接口能满足无人飞行器控制系统的要求。     

GKS in an object-oriented environment

Because of its basis properties, object-oriented programming is well suited to creating user interfaces or graphical applications. However, object-oriented systems are often without graphics or have only a graphical kernel which presents a very low level of use. Besides, such graphical kernels are dependent on the implementation. The use of graphical standards could be an alternative way to bring portability of the applications. Object-oriented systems are often implemented on top of Common Lisp or similar Lisp dialects. In this paper the implementation of an object-oriented shell of an available GKS implementation using an object-oriented extension of Common Lisp will be discussed.     

Multiple spatial sounds in hierarchical menu navigation for visually impaired computer users

This paper describes a user study on the benefits and drawbacks of simultaneous spatial sounds in auditory interfaces for visually impaired and blind computer users. Two different auditory interfaces in spatial and non-spatial condition were proposed to represent the hierarchical menu structure of a simple word processing application. In the horizontal interface, the sound sources or the menu items were located in the horizontal plane on a virtual ring surrounding the user’s head, while the sound sources in the vertical interface were aligned one above the other in front of the user. In the vertical interface, the central pitch of the sound sources at different elevations was changed in order to improve the otherwise relatively low localization performance in the vertical dimension. The interaction with the interfaces was based on a standard computer keyboard for input and a pair of studio headphones for output. Twelve blind or visually impaired test subjects were asked to perform ten different word processing tasks within four experiment conditions. Task completion times, navigation performance, overall satisfaction and cognitive workload were evaluated. The initial hypothesis, i.e. that the spatial auditory interfaces with multiple simultaneous sounds should prove to be faster and more efficient than non-spatial ones, was not confirmed. On the contrary—spatial auditory interfaces proved to be significantly slower due to the high cognitive workload and temporal demand. The majority of users did in fact finish tasks with less navigation and key pressing; however, they required much more time. They reported the spatial auditory interfaces to be hard to use for a longer period of time due to the high temporal and mental demand, especially with regards to the comprehension of multiple simultaneous sounds. The comparison between the horizontal and vertical interface showed no significant differences between the two. It is important to point out that all participants were novice users of the system; therefore it is possible that the overall performance could change with a more extensive use of the interfaces and an increased number of trials or experiments sets. Our interviews with visually impaired and blind computer users showed that they are used to sharing their auditory channel in order to perform multiple simultaneous tasks such as listening to the radio, talking to somebody, using the computer, etc. As the perception of multiple simultaneous sounds requires the entire capacity of the auditory channel and total concentration of the listener, it does therefore not enable such multitasking.     

图形界面的一种面向对象的方法

文章用面向对象的方法来建立一个图形用户界面系统。该系统采取了三种关键技术:基于对象图形的方法;相互对象的关系,例如组合和图形依赖;以及界面与应用的完全分离。并在此基础上建立它的对象模型、状态模型和功能模型。最后给出了该系统的一个应用。     

A visual tool for user-interface development

VITUID is a visual tool for user interface development. It aims to help user-interface designers, who may be non-programmers, to specify and create interactive, graphical user interfaces through graphical interaction. VITUID lets designers specify the user command set and the human-computer dialogs by building a tree and specifying the behavior of each dialog via a dialog-control word, adopting the object-oriented approach. The main strategy of VITUID is to separate a user interface into an application-dependent part and an application-independent part and then let the designer specify only the application-dependent part.     

GTI,a graphical telephone interface

Graphical Telephone Interface (GTI) is a screen-based telephony application for telecommunication services. It provides an intuitive user interface to the myriad of services and features in state-of-the-art communication systems, such as ISDN or a digital (ISDN) PBX. As a high-end telephony user interface, GTI controls voice and data connections with the comfort and ease of use to today's graphical user interfaces.     

基于声卡和MATLAB的太阳电池伏安特性自动测试系统

对实验室常用的太阳电池伏安特性测试方法进行改进,设计了一种利用计算机通用外设--声卡进行模拟信号的采集与A/D转换,并利用MATLAB软件进行数据处理与分析的太阳电池电流电压特性自动测试系统.建立测量与信号变换电路,通过软件实现了图形用户界面操作,同时对测试结果的可靠性进行了理论分析,通过测试表明系统符合设计的要求.     

A graphical editor and process visualization system for man-machine interfaces of dynamic systems

The process visualization system of a manmachine interface is presented. It allows human operator(s) to interact with a dynamic technical system, here a thermal power plant. Also, a graphical editor for designing dynamic pictures of the process visualization system is explained. Both new systems have a common architecture and are based on the computer graphics standard PHIGS-2D with extensions for handling non-graphical and graphical information. The hierarchical information structures are manipulated with lists and pointers in a dynamic visual database. The two menu-driven interfaces for designers and for operators are described with their multi-window display layouts. The software of both systems is highly portable to different hardware and to other application domains.     

Designing maintainable, reusable interfaces

A conceptual framework, the Interaction Management Network (IMN), that captures the essential structure of any interface from task-oriented specification to object-oriented implementation is presented. IMN is essentially a task-oriented specification scheme based on a semantic network. For each element, as well as for the complete network, there is a direct representation suitable for object-oriented implementation. By capturing task relationships in the interface specification and explicitly representing constraints, designers can create interfaces that meet the often elusive user requirements. The application of IMN to creating an interface system for laying out floors is described     

基于STC单片机和LabVIEW的心音信号检测系统

介绍了一种用于身份识别的心音信号采集和处理系统。该系统利用STC12C5A单片机作为核心控制器,通过自带的A/D对经过放大、滤波等预处理后的心音信号进行模数转换,然后通过RS232总线将信号传输到上位机进行处理,在上位机利用LabVIEW设计一套集数据采集、存储、回放和分析于一体的虚拟检测平台。实验结果表明,利用该系统采集三位被测试者60组心音信号,建立WPT+GA-SVM心音身份识别模型,其识别准确率达到了85%。     

一个演绎对象数据库SD-DOOD的设计与实现

通过探寻面向对象数据库与知识库技术相结合的途径，研究演绎对象数据库系统实现的关键技术。以基于演绎数据库系统SD-DDBS，设计实现了一个演绎对象数据库系统原型SD-DOOD。系统支持类、类层次、对象、属性、方法、继承和封装等面向对象数据库系统的核心概念，支持演绎对象等演绎数据库的概念，提供了图形用户接口(GUI)，便于用户进行创建、查询等操作。     

Using non-speech sound to overcome information overload

With ever increasing amounts of visual information to take in when interacting with computers, users can become overloaded. One reason is that computers communicate solely by graphical output. This paper suggests the use of non-speech sound output to enhance the graphical display of information to overcome overload. The question is how to integrate the display of sound and graphics to capitalise on the advantages each offers. The approach described here is to integrate sound into the basic components of the human-computer interface. Two experiments are described where non-speech sounds were added to buttons and scrollbars. Results showed sound improved usability by increasing performance and reducing time to recover from errors. Subjective workload measures also showed a significant reduction. Results from this work show that the integrated display of graphical and auditory information can overcome information overload.