Separating content from form: A language for formatting on-line documentation and dialog

摘要

Recent research has demonstrated the advantages of separating management of the user interface from the application program. A user interface system should integrate access to on-line help and documentation with other dialog for interacting with the program into a uniform environment. We describe such a user interface management system, called ICE, with emphasis on its facilities for authoring networks of frames containing help information and menus for interacting with the application program. Authors can write help and dialog using a language similar to the SCRIBE document processing system, widely used at CMU and elsewhere. But instead of generating hardcopy documents for different printing devices, ICE produces interactive "softcopy" documents, consisting of a network of frames combining documentation and interface.

In ICE the screen layout of frames and the style of interaction is specified in a format file which is separate from the dialog file that contains the text to appear in the frames. This separation allows the dialog author to write the text without having to worry much about its precise appearance on the screen. The display designer can specify the actual format independently. The same text can be formatted in different ways to make use of different display devices and to allow experimentation with alternative formats and styles of interaction.