A two-view approach to constructing user interfaces

Abstract

This paper describes a system for constructing graphical user interfaces following a two-view paradigm: one view contains a textual representation of the interface in a special-purpose, "little" language, and the other view contains a direct manipulation, interactive editor for the user interface. The user interface can be edited in either view, and the changes are reflected in the other view. The language allows dialog boxes to be expressed in a simple and natural way, and has a well-defined mapping into the interactive editor. A base set of interactors is currently available, but the system can be easily extended with more interactors. We believe this approach to building user interfaces combines the advantages of the direct manipulation, WYSIWYG approach with the advantages of the textual, descriptive approach, and does not suffer from the limitations of either approach.