This paper describes a rule-based interface design system which allows a programmer to develop the presentation part of user interface with high level abstraction. There are three approaches in developing the presentation part of user interface: textual programming, direct manipulation, and rule-based approach. Our system is designed using the rule-based approach and includes a direct manipulation editor. A rule-based UIMS with a direct manipulation editor has a problem when a designer modifies the generated interface using the direct manipulation editor. The problem is that if a designer modifies the high level description and re-generates the interface, he/she should again modify the interface with the direct manipulation editor.
In this thesis, we propose a solution to the problem by augmenting the high level description using the modified result. This approach eliminates the problem and supports rapid prototyping. An application produced by an UIMS utilizes the specific libraries of the UIMS. Thus, it requires massive work to port the application which was made using the UIMS to another platform. To avoid this problem, our system generates source codes which use standard libraries and common user interface toolkit, resulting in increased application portability.
