USER INTERFACE - APPLICATION COMMUNICATION IN THE CHIMERA USER INTERFACE MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM

Until quite recently, perhaps the least appreciated part of user interface management system (UIMS) architecture has been the interface to the application. A number of approaches to interface-application communication have been attempted, but these have suffered as a result of being non-programmable, unstructured and/or static. This paper presents the user-interface-application communication system developed for the Chimera UIMS, which attempts to address these problems. This system enables interprocess communication between user interface and application via an explicit, programmable UIMS component-an application linkage, which is structured, dynamic and reconfigurable at run-time. The internal structure of the linkage is described, along with the mechanism for communication with dialogue control and application. An extensive example is developed in order to illustrate the communication process to and from the user via dialogue control and linkage to the application.