Metamouse: specifying graphical procedures by example

Abstract

Metamouse is a device enabling the user of a drawing program to specify graphical procedures by supplying example execution traces. The user manipulates objects directly on the screen, creating graphical tools where necessary to help make constraints explicit; the system records the sequence of actions and induces a procedure. Generalization is used both to identify the key features of individual program steps, disregarding coincidental events; and to connect the steps into a program graph, creating loops and conditional branches as appropriate. Metamouse operates within a 2D click-and-drag drafting package, and incorporates a strong model of the relative imporlance of different types of graphical constraint. Close attention is paid to user interface aspects, and Metamouse helps the user by predicting and performing actions, thus reducing the tedium of repetitive graphical editing tasks.

Design and evaluation techniques for authoring interactive and stylistic behaviors

“…Early PBD was used to automate GUI operations [Cypher 1991;Maulsby et al 1989] or specifically define character planning models [Dinerstein et al 2007]. For example, Pavlov [Wolber 1997] defines the low-level stimulus-response behavior of interactive agents.…”

Augmentation-Based Learning combining observations and user edits for Programming-by-Demonstration

“…provide value 1.4 for 'source compatibility' (8) check 'preserve unused local variable' box (10) click OK…”

“….'' // import test1 (5) Select ''Existing Project into Workspace'' (6) Open ''C:neclipsenworkspacesnworkspacen test1'' (7) Click ''Finish'' (8) if TreeItem ''test2'' does not exist (9) then (10) Right-click on PWTree // import test2 (11) Select popup menu item ''Import. .…”

Research directions for user interface software tools

“…Demonstrational programming systems allow users to specify steps in a computation by means of examples--often provided as a part of normal interaction. For example, systems can use demonstrational techniques to detect and automate repetitive tasks (Myers et al 1987, Maulsby 1989, Cypher 1991. The user can manually carry out the first few iterations.…”