Template-based mapping of application data interactive displays
Pedro A. Szekely · 1990
This paper describes a template-based method for constructing interactive displays with the building-blocks (widgets 1 provided in a user interface toolkit.Templates specify how to break down complex application objects into smaller pieces, specify the graphical components (widgets) to be used for displaying each piece, and specify their layout.Complex interfaces are constructed by recursively applying templates, thus constructing a tree of widgets to display a complex application object.The template-based method is more general than the interactive, WYSIWYG interface builders in that it can specify dynamic displays for application data that changes at run time.The template-based method also leads to more consistent, extendable and modifiable interfaces. I .O IntroductionUser interface toolkits such as the X Toolkit [ 101 and the Macintosh Tool-Box [S] provide abstractions that make the construction of user interfaces significantly easier than programming using graphics primitives.Unfortunately the toolkits do not make the construction of user interfaces easy enough.The tasks of assembling the widgets to construct complex displays, and of tying the widgets to application data structures remains difficult and time consuming.Interactive user interface builder systems such as Prototyper [ 141 provide interactive what-you-see-is-what-you-get interfaces to assemble tool-box widgets into more complex