Generating User Interfaces by means of Declarative Meta Programming

1
Generating User Interfaces by means of
Declarative Meta Programming

• Goderis Sofie
• Programming Technology Lab
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel

2
Outline

• Important issues for User Interfaces
• DMP as a solution
• SOUL
• Generating UI with SOUL
• Conclusion

3
User Interfaces Important issues

• Decoupling UI and Application
• Different UIs for 1 application, on different
  devices
• Creation on a higher level (device in-dependable)
• Transformation towards lower level (device
  dependable)

gt UI Generation
4
Declarative Meta Programming

• Writing declarative programs dealing with other
  programs
• Generating UI
• Facts representing user interface specification
• Facts representing hooks in application code
• Rules expressing how to combine both parts
• Different layers

5
SOUL

• Prolog alike programming language
• Logic facts data, knowledge
• Rules reasoning about these facts
• Meta layer on top of Smalltalk
• Smalltalk term Smalltalk objects as SOUL
  constants
• Quoted term unevaluated strings, possibly
  annotated with logic variables

6
Generating with SOUL

• Higher level specification
• Fact question(q, The actual question?)
• Rule for HTML
• Rule generateHTML(?something, ?code)
  if question(?something, ?text), equals(?code,
  
• lthtmlgtltbodygt lth1gt Question lt/h1gt ltu1gt
  ?text lt/u1gt lt/bodygt lt/html? )

7

• Rule for Smalltalk pop-up
• Rule generateSmt(?something, ?code)
  if question(?something, ?text), equals(?code,
  
• PopUpMenu confirm ?text)
• Generating
• generateHTML(q, ?htmlcode)
• generateSmt(q, ?smtcode)

8
Conclusion

• Position Use of DMP for generating UIs
• Lots of future work