HP Labs Technical Reports

On Piecewise Linear Approximations to Curves

Natarajan, Balas K.

HPL-91-36

Keyword(s):

Abstract: Selectors constitute a new approach to providing graphical controls for applications, focusing on the semantics of controls rather than their appear- ance. Instead of specifying interfaces in terms of physical "widgets" like buttons, sliders, menus, text fields, etc., designers specify them in terms of the role of each control: n-way choices, on/off settings, continuous-within-range settings, etc. Each type of setting has a variety of possible presentations. For example, an n-way choice can be displayed as a set of radio buttons, a menu, or a scrolling list. Choosing or changing presentations is trivial and, in some cases, could be made automatic. This report describes a prototype implementation of Selectors based upon the InterViews user-interface object library. Interfaces built using IVSelectors require less code and can be changed more easily than interfaces built using ordinary InterViews Interactors.

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