The Tunes Interfaces Subproject

(Last modified Tuesday, Jun 27, 1995 @ 11:20AM PST)

Project scope

The Interfaces subproject is devoted towards specifying how things will interact and interface. This includes humans speaking to computers, computers speaking to humans, computers speaking to each other.

The project currently has two main areas to look at. The first is how to create Tunes User Interfaces that are easier to program for and use that existing ones. Basically to fix everything wrong with today's programming and using environments.

The second is the development of a syntax for the HLL. Fare has a good start going with the semantics, but without some sort of syntax, you can't have much of a language. I personally am for making the semantics and syntax so seperate that no centralized syntax is necesary at all. Instead, you simply transport an internal representation around, and can then edit the code using whatever sort of enviornment you want--be it a Self/C/Pascal/whatever-like text language, or something graphical, like Prograph. We still need syntax, though. I'm just promoting the availibility of many compatible syntaxes.

Plan of Action (probably out of date)

HLL
- Examine existing high-level language syntaxes. Find the strenghts and weaknesses of each one.
- Design new language syntax based on these findings.
UI
- Look at existing UIs, both from a user and programmer perspective, and find their strengths and weaknesses.
- Think about new, future interface techniques that may be beoming more possible: auditory, VR, etc..
- Create UIs, or sets of UIs, based on these findings.

Project Members

Project coordinatior: Chris

Members: (What the heck does this membership thing mean anyway?)

Andy
Colin
Dan
Raul

Mailing List Archive

I'm currently trying to get hypermail set up around here, so that it will be of minimal pain to get the Interfaces mailing list archive up and running again without too much grief. Also would like to get some summaries up here about our current isues with the worlds thread, etc.. So much to come!

Internal UI Developments

In theory, I'm spending some time learning a bit about Scheme and Tk (with the STk package), so I can start messing around with this words concept. Unfortunately, the Tk part of STk seems to be acting a bit weird at the moment (ie one day buttons work, the next day they don't). So stay TUNESed.... =)

What's Wrong With Today's UIs and What We Can Do to Help: a sketch of a paper (outdated!) by Chris

Some of Rainer's UI thoughts

External UI Devopments

Jecel (jecel@lsi.usp.br) has been working on an interesting interface for his Merlin project. For more information, click here.

Anyone know of any other links? I'm sure there's more out there, and this looks quite bare.

Click here to return to the Tunes home page.

Page maintainer:
Chris -- chharris@u.washington.edu