建構圖形使用者介面有兩種主要的工具，其中一種是使用者介面建造器，另一種則是圖形系統。使用者介面建造器的發展趨勢為顯示導向的；限制系統則被廣泛的應用於圖形使用者介面的建構。 高階使用者介面管理系統提供一個高階的對話模式用來敘述人機之間的互動。他們之間有一個主要的共通問題為對話導向，因此難以使用。本篇論文提出了一個高階階使用者介面管理系統，AppComp，採用了顯示導向的使用者介面發展方法論，使用介面發展者可以很容易的先創作圖形化的使用者介面，至於較難的對話模式訂定，系統則會提供協助。這種方式有一個直接的效益就是提供了高度視覺化的發展環境。AppComp視覺化的程度比之前的高階使用者介面管理系統及使用者介面建造器都來的高。 限制系統被廣泛的應用於圖形使用者介面的建構。宣告式的使用者介面限制系統較受歡迎，但是需要複雜的計畫法則。現有的限制計畫法則已經變的越來越複雜，因為被要求處理更多一般性的需求。我們相信這是肇因於複雜的資料結構，而複雜的資料結構則從限制計畫問題本身直接定義而來。經過一個轉換，本論文針對限制計畫問題提出了一個簡化的圖形模式，經過證明，限制計畫問題可以簡化為：在簡化的圖形模式上尋找回饋節點的集合。同時本論文亦考慮了非均一性使用者限制系統的一般性問題。 There are two major types of tools for the construction of graphical user interfaces. One is user interface builder and the other is graphic system. The trend of developing interface builder is presentation-oriented. The constraint system has been used extensively for the construction of graphical user interfaces. High-level UIMSs support a high-level dialog model specialized for human-computer interaction. A major problem common to high-level UIMSs is that they are dialog-oriented and thus hard to use. A high-level UIMS, AppComp, is constructed that adopts a presentation-oriented user interface development methodology. The presentation-oriented methodology lets interface developers do the relatively easy task of creating the user interface presentation first; the system then helps them on the hard task of dialog specification later on. An immediate benefit of this approach is its support for a highly visual development environment. AppComp is more visual than previous high-level UIMSs and interface builders. Constraints have been used extensively for the construction of graphical user interfaces. User interface constraints that are declarative are more favorable but require sophisticated constraint planning algorithms. Constraint planning algorithms proposed previously are getting more and more complicated as they were asked to handle more general requirements. We believe that the difficulty is mainly caused by the complicated data structure that is translated directly from the problem. By a transformation, we propose a simplified graph model for the problem and prove that the constraint planning problem can be reduced to finding feedback vertex sets on the simplified graph model. We also consider the general problem of handling non-uniform user interface constraints.
