The Amulet environment: new models for effective user interface software development

Abstract

The Amulet user interface development environment makes it easier for programmers to create highly-interactive, graphical user interface software for Unix, Windows and the Macintosh. Amulet uses new models for objects, constraints, animation, input, output, commands, and undo. The object system is a prototype-instance model in which there is no distinction between classes and instances or between methods and data. The constraint system allows any value of any object to be computed by arbitrary code and supports multiple constraint solvers. Animations can be attached to existing objects with a single line of code. Input from the user is handled by "interactor" objects which support reuse of behavior objects. The output model provides a declarative definition of the graphics and supports automatic refresh. Command objects encapsulate all of the information needed about operations, including support for various ways to undo them. A key feature of the Amulet design is that all graphical objects and behaviors of those objects are explicitly represented at run-time, so the system can provide a number of high-level built-in functions, including automatic display and editing of objects, and external analysis and control of interfaces. Amulet integrates these capabilities in a flexible and effective manner. Index Terms-Toolkits, user interface tools, user interface development environments, user interface management systems (UIMSs).

Lessons learned about one-way, dataflow constraints in the Garnet and Amulet graphical toolkits

“…This article describes the insights we have gained from 10 years of experience with implementing and adapting these algorithms in the Garnet and Amulet toolkits [Myers et al 1990[Myers et al , 1997. Garnet is a Lisp-based toolkit for developing interactive graphical applications, first released in 1989 and used by over 80 projects.…”

“…Their initial success in spreadsheets and attribute grammars [Knuth 1968] has inspired researchers to use them as tools in a variety of applications, including graphical interfaces [Barth 1986;Myers 1990a;Myers et al 1990Myers et al , 1997Hill 1993;Hill et al 1994;Hudson and King 1988;Hudson 1993Hudson , 1994Henry and Hudson 1988;Hudson and Smith 1996], programming environments [Demers et al 1981;Reps et al 1983;Hoover 1987Hoover , 1992, and circuit simulations [Alpern et al 1990].…”

Supporting Generic Sketching-Based Input of Diagrams in a Domain-Specific Visual Language Meta-Tool

“…Forms3, a spreadsheet style end user programming environment, has been extended with gestural input [4]. Amulet supports gesture-based document manipulation [25] while Knight [8], SUMLOW [5], and Donaldson et al [9] support UML diagram sketching. Most immediately convert sketched input into computer-drawn formalized content.…”

Jazz: An Extensible Zoomable User Interface Graphics Toolkit in Java

“…The Tk Canvas [17] for example supports object-oriented 2D graphics, though it has no hierarchies or extensibility. Amulet [19] is a toolkit that supports widgets and custom graphics, but it has no support for arbitrary transformations (such as scaling), semantic zooming, and multiple views.…”