Automated Design of Displays for Technical Data

Abstract

This paper reports on a theory of a graphical display that automatically designs tables and diagrams that represent relations occurring in technical data. The theory is based upon a small number of principles such as using visual adjacency and visual connectedness to reflect semantic relations among the data. The theory uses techniques adapted from automated programming for display reformulation and display optimization. A prototype display synthesis system that implements the theory as a set of transformation rules has been written. The system takes a relational specification as input and produces a display as output. The theory is illustrated in this paper by showing an annotated trace of the prototype generating a large number of tables and diagrams from relational technical data. The examples show the generation of displays from aircraft maintenance technical data that is free of all formatting and display instructions. (KR)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA226729

Entities

People

  • Cordell Green
  • David Zimmerman
  • Stephen Westfold

Organizations

  • Kestrel Institute

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Air Force
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Information Systems
  • Language
  • Logistics
  • Maintenance
  • Models
  • Optimization
  • Prototypes
  • Software Development
  • Specifications
  • Standards
  • User Interface

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Computer Science.
  • Database Systems and Applications