EUPHORIA: End-User Construction of Direct Manipulation
User Interfaces for Distributed Applications
- T. Paul McCartney,
Kenneth J. Goldman,
David E. Saff
The Programmers' Playground is a software library and run-time system
for creating distributed multimedia applications from collections of
reusable software modules. This paper presents the design and
implementation of
EUPHORIA,
Playground's user interface management
system. Implemented as a Playground module, EUPHORIA allows end-users
to create direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
exclusively through the use of a graphics editor. No programming is
required. At run-time, attributes of the GUI state can be exposed and
connected to external Playground modules, allowing the user to
visualize and directly manipulate state information in remote
Playground modules. Features of EUPHORIA include real-time direct
manipulation graphics, constraint-based editing and visualization,
imaginary alignment objects, user-definable types, and user-definable
widgets with alternative representations.
KEYWORDS: constraints, direct manipulation, distributed applications,
graphical user interfaces, multimedia, user interface management
system
Technical report version is available as
postscript (.ps) or
compressed postscript (.ps.Z).
Color overhead slides are available:
Software Concepts and Tools, 16(4):147-159, December 1995.
Washington University Department of Computer Science WUCS-95-29, August 1995.
Prepared by
T. Paul McCartney
(paul@cs.wustl.edu)
Washington University Department of Computer Science