Vis/Vapourware Interface Synthesiser

A proposal for abstract user interface programming

The essay

Abstract: We propose a thin framework for describing user interface semantics of programs. A user interface matching a user's preferences can then with the help of stylesheets be generated automatically based on this description while also ensuring system-wide consistency of user interfaces and taking the burden of designing user interfaces away from the application programmer.

vis-paper/ (html)
vis-paper.dvi
vis-paper.ps.gz
vis-paper.pdf

Miscellaneous

"Light at the end of the tunnel",
"Scripting, configuration, and API design", and
"Computing in the age of tangled barbware" at my repository of unpopular opinions
A thread discussing implementation issues of Vis on the Ion mailing list.
Adobe Source Libraries is an interesting development that provides, to my knowledge, the best approximation of Vis so far.

– Tuomo Valkonen < tuomov at iki dot fi >