Design concept of a system for developing application-dependent user interface

The authors describe a novel approach to a user interface management system (UIMS), which does not need much programming effort constructing graphical user interfaces. Using a conventional UIMS, designers can develop a graphical user interface by combination of user-interface parts such as menus or meters. But in this approach, a variety of user-interface parts are needed to build a graphical user interface customized for a particular application, and it is also difficult to prepare all parts types beforehand. The authors extend the UIMS concept by which a designer can build a graphical user interface for a particular application without any programming. Its main points are: (1) not only using the parts, but drawing a picture for display design by a graphical editor, (2) then relating the picture to an application program, and (3) adding echoing functions to the picture by deciding how to manipulate figures using interactive methods