A pictorial query language for geographical databases

摘要

This is the third International Workshop on Advanced VisualInterfaces and, as we had expected, the area has extended touchingon many human issues as visual perception, cognition and mentalsystem modelling. We are overwhelmed by images (from newspapers tomovies to television) and yet have little time for correctly usingall this huge information in our everyday tasks; even less in ourjob accomplishments.>The ever increasing popularity of the World Wide Web with allits sites, full of promises (not always kept) has also called fornew and better ways to find, present and use displayed information(including text and all forms of graphical representations). Theextension of the range of computer users of complex softwareapplications has also requested new easy-to-learn & useinterfaces which could quickly be tailored to different networks,computing platforms and application programs, thus avoiding theneed of thick handbooks, instruction courses, etc.>For all these reasons, old and new visual interfaces play animportant role in the communication between general purposecomputer users and programs, with the latters either running onone's own machine or on a network.>In the two previous editions of AVI we gathered members fromindustry and academia hoping to establish a link between these twoworking environments. As it can be seen by the contributions ofthis edition, such link is furthered not only by the invitedspeakers but also through demos of prototypes and existing systemswhich all contain innovative aspects of interfaces.>AVI'96 hosts three guest speakers, Stuart Card from Xerox PaloAlto, Alberto Mendelzon from the University of Toronto and Alan Dixfrom the University of Huddersfield, as well as a fourth speaker,Ben Shneiderman from the University of Maryland, who has beeninvited to draw the conclusions. A panel on Multimedia UserInterfaces, chaired by Isabel Cruz from Tufts University, is alsogiven. It analyzes the challenges in the area, also in relationwith the explosion ofthe communication networks, which must befaced, and possibly solved.>We are happy to mention that we did receive a large number ofmanuscripts and system descriptions from several countriesworldwide, out of which only 22 full papers and 10 demos whereselected. Their topics range from new features incorporated inprototype interfaces to virtual environments, showing a number ofpresent and foreseen applications. A significant part of them dealswith the changes in the way the users interact with the informationwhich have been caused by the growth of the Internet.>Let us quickly scan the program. The vast amount of informationavailable either through the Web or within different databases mustbe filtered in some way enabling users to navigate, explore, selectand retrieve what is convenient at a given time. This topic opensthe Workshop with the invited speech from Xerox PARC. Severalpapers deal with analogous themes, and other authors talk about newways to display, locally and on the Web, information related tocommunication, and information about processes, as well asalgorithm animation. Still related with the global informationinfrastructure is the invited talk from the University of Toronto,which discusses the problem of querying and visualising datathrough the Internet, also from a database-oriented point ofview.>Actually, databases continue to be one of the main applicationsof computer technology, and the possibility of smoothly interactingwith them through suitable interfaces is explored in differentpapers. In particular, there is a group of contributions in thearea of pictorial database interfaces, where images must beretrieved, browsed and used during querying. Other papers present anumber of tools, both theoretical, as computational models, andexperimental, as particular programming methodologies, on which theinterfaces are built. Finally, the invited talk from the Universityof Huddersfield deals with action, perception and information,which are analyzed within a formal framework describing thehuman-computer interaction activity.>The program also includes a number of system demos: on enablinghypermedia presentations, on visualising and querying databases, onbuilding user interfaces for pen-based systems, and an interestingsimulation of face-to-face interaction.>Interfaces play a fundamental role in every computerapplication. They may appear as either well hinged doors thatnaturally open the way to programs, or locked gates which needspecial keys to be unfolded. Presently we are in an intermediatesituation in which some of us have a restricted number of keys, butsometimes lack just the one which is required...>The content of this volume is organized in 9 Chapters. The firstchapter includes the contributions of the invited speakers and abrief description of the panel content. Chapters 2 to 8 contain thepapers presented at the corresponding technical sessions of theworkshop. Finally, Chapter 9 includes the descriptions of thesystems which have been demonstrated.