A dialogue model is used to describe the structure of the dialogue between a user and an interactive computer system and forms the basis of the notations to be used in the user interface management systems(UIMS). RAPID/USE, one of the UIMSs with state transition diagram as a dialogue model, was developed to support the User Software Engineering(USE) methodology for the specification and development of interactive systems. In this thesis, we design a specification language which can support the direct-manipulation user interface style based on a USE transition diagram as a dialogue model. For that purpose, the specification language of the USE methodology has been extended such that it can describe the direct manipulation features such as the window creation, the window menus, screen buttons, scroll bars, and mouse controls. The implementation of the language processor is described, and example specifications are given.
