Integrating pointer variables into one-way constraint models
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
Optimizing toolkit-generated graphical interfaces
UIST '94 Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
An empirical study of constraint usage in graphical applications
Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
Using model dataflow graphs to reduce the storage requirements of constraints
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
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Providing a structured graphics model and a constraint system makes the programming of graphical applications significantly easier. In a structured graphics model, each graphic element on the screen is represented by a real object in the object system, while a constraint system automatically maintains relationships among the objects. Although many research systems and a few commercial environments provide structured graphics and constraints, none scale up to large interfaces with thousands of objects and thousands of constraints. This paper presents four techniques to overcome this problem: automatic elimination of constraints that depend only on values that do not change, layout hints to help with refresh and hit detection, "virtual aggregates" that only pretend to allocate objects for their components, and compiling composite aggregates into a single object with a complex draw method. These have been implemented as part of the Garnet environment, and we have demonstrated that together they allow structured graphics and constraints to scale up to applications with tens of thousands of objects and constraints without compromising the ease-of-use.