Implementation of error handling in dynamic interfaces to scientific codes.

摘要

With the advent of powerful workstations with windowing systems, the scientific community has become interested in user friendly interfaces as a means of promoting the distribution of scientific codes to colleagues. Distributing scientific codes to a wider audience can, however, be problematic because scientists, who are familiar with the problem being addressed but not aware of necessary operational details, are encouraged to use the codes. A more friendly environment that not only guides user inputs, but also helps catch errors is needed. This thesis presents a dynamic graphical user interface (GUI) creation system with user controlled support for error detection and handling. The system checks a series of constraints defining a valid input set whenever the state of the system changes and notifies the user when an error has occurred. A naive checking scheme was implemented that checks every constraint every time the system changes. However, this method examines many constraints whose values have not changed. Therefore, a minimum evaluation scheme that only checks those constraints that may have been violated was implemented. This system was implemented in a prototype and user testing was used to determine if it was a success. Users examined both the GUI creation system and the end-user environment. The users found both to be easy to use and efficient enough for practical use. Moreover, they concluded that the system would promote distribution.