Objective
GUIs (graphical user interfaces) are essential for a widespread and effective use of computers and networks. However, their current design techniques are not satisfactory, being based on empirical know-how and on clever tricks, causing higher costs and delays in their delivery, and making them hard to be revised or extended. This project, if successful, will make the design of GUIs as systematic and reliable as the design of compilers or language processors.
The result will be a GUI Writing System, whose prototypes should be mature enough to be turned commercially exploited.
Since BNF grammars used for compilers are rather unsuitable for modelling GUIs, an innovative syntax-directed technique for handling sequences of events, known as Augmented BNF (ABNF) grammars, will be adopted. Algorithms and tools will be developed for generating GUIs, starting from a ABNF syntactic and semantic description. First, it will be proved the suitability of ABNF grammars, extended with semantic attributes, for modelling sequences of event and to program semantic actions. Then, the project will proceed with tool and system development.
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
ACM - Preparatory, accompanying and support measuresCoordinator
20133 MILANO
Italy