IS2 Flexible Information Space Management Application

1
IS2 Flexible Information Space Management
Application

• Sofía Brenes Barahona
• Alex Platte
• Aleksander Slominski

2
Project Purpose

• Flis/IS2 goals.
• Manage large amounts of related data.
• Backend is ready, needs graphical front end.
• Fluency approach advantages.

3
Initial Wish List

• Extensible visualizations.
• Organize topics like graph nodes.
• Application wont deal with automatic graph node
  layout.
• Visualize To Know More

4
Initial Wish List

• Link resources of different types.
• Search capability.
• Filter capability (time, relations, )
• Saving or Freezing.
• Allow for Topic annotations.
• Mark entries with colors.
• HTML Preview.
• Available online (WebStart).

5
Problems with Wish List

• Too ambitious.
• Learning curve of Atom API.
• Current Fluency redesign.

6
Design

• Still, use widgets.
• Define them as similar to Fluency widgets as
  possible.
• Have them communicate through Event Channel.

7
Event Channel

• Basic Event Channel

Widget A
Widget B
Event Channel
8
Types of Events
9
IS2 Event Channels
10
Event Channel Implementation

• interface EventXPublisher extends
  IceEventPublisher
• interface EventXListener extends IceEventListener
  
• somethingHappened(XEvent event)
• interface EventXChannel extends IceEventChannel,
  EventXPublisher, EventXListener
• EventXChannel newXEC IceEventChannelUtil.createE
  ventChannel (EventXChannel.class)
• widgetOne.addXEventListener (newXChannel)
• widgetTwo.addXEventListener (newXChannel)
• newXChannel.addXEventListener (widgetThree)
• newXChannel.addXEventListener (widgetFour)

11
Spaces

• Flexible application, not only for IS2.

12
Widgets
13
Control Flow

• ApplicationWidget emits Application Started
  Event.
• All Preferences Elements Widgets receive the
  Application Started Event and load their
  preferences.
• Particularly, the Connection Preferences
  ElementWidget checks for connection preferences,
  and then
• If they are not found, emits a Request Show
  Preferences Tab Event. Goes to step 4.
• If they are found, emits a Connection Preferences
  Found Event. Goes to step 5.
• The Preferences Tab is shown, and asks the user
  to enter a connection's information. It is stored
  to the preferences, and a Request Connection
  Event. Goes to step 6.
• ConnectionWidget receives the Connection
  Preferences Found Event and emits a Request
  Connection Event.
• MachineWidget receives Request Connection Event
  and asks the Space contained in the preferences
  to connect.
• Machine Widget emits and Ice Machine Connected
  Event if all goes well. Otherwise, it emits an
  Ice Machine Exception Event. If it was
  successful, it will retrieve the entries and emit
  an Entries Retrieved Event.
• WindowWdg receives EntriesRetrievedEvent so it
  adds its entries to its viewer. This is where the
  user interaction begins.

14
Fluent Flis/IS2

• Application design facilitates Fluency
  transition.
• Flis/IS2 widgets translated to Fluency widgets.
• Event Channel connections translated to pipes.
• Decoupling not always possible.

15
Demo
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Conclusions

• Knowledge Organization is a very complex problem.
• Organizing large amounts of data is still not
  resolved.
• Graph toolkits are not good.
• JGraph, TouchGraph,
• TouchGraph is at least small and BSD
• Widget design allows for future expansion and
  maintenance.

17
Next Steps

• Early stages of application.
• Threads -gt Bugs.
• Entries vs. Search Results vs. Suggestions.
• GUI needs lots of work.
• How to make it easy for users to fix GUI?
• Why not script whole application creations and
  connection?