GIT-GVU- 94-03

Grouping and Ordering User Interface Components

Mark H. Gray James D. Foley Kevin E. Mullet

In automatically generating a user interface from a model of the target application, many factors that affect the resulting interface's quality must be considered. Any available semantic information that can improve the interface should be used. Application actions or action parameters may be related in ways that affect placement of their associated controls in dialogue boxes. Two relationships considered here are grouping and ordering. Grouped objects should appear together, possibly visually separated from other controls, and controls which have a logical sequential ordering should appear in that order. We present an algorithm for creating an ordering of controls which correctly satisfies these constraints.

User Interface Software, automatic user interface design, data models, dependencies, grouping, ordering

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