Automatic layout techniques are already utilized in many specific application domains, like graph drawing and computer aided design. While these approaches are very effective, they’re limited to a specific domain and don’t address the range of applications dealt with in 3D user interfaces. This dissertation offers a way for specifying the structure of objects in a 3D user interface along the techniques utilized to implement it. A couple of the primary problems facing the developers of 3D user interface are the number of device configurations that needs to be supported and the shortage of software tools for constructing 3D user interfaces. The Grappl project is designed to fix these issues by automatically generating 3D user interfaces which adjust to the device configurations which they experience at runtime. Because the user interface is constructed at runtime, one of the problems faced by Grappl is laying out of various user interface components and perhaps some of the application widgets. The primary goals of this study are to create a group of layout techniques for 3D user interfaces, add them to Grappl and evaluate them in the context of a real application. The key contributions of this research are the implementation of layout framework, policies for specifying user interface layout, and data structures and algorithms for space management.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Objective
1.2 Scope
1.3 Methodology
1.4 Contributions
1.5 Significance
2 Background
2.1 Motivation
2.2 Problem Statement
2.2.1 Devices Configuration Issue
2.2.2 Software Tool Issue
2.3 Current Solution
2.4 Related Work
2.4.1 Interface Builders
2.4.2 Interaction Technique Toolkits
2.4.3 Virtual Reality Packages
2.4.4 Automatic Layout Designs
3 Grappl
3.1 Overview
3.2 Run-Time Architecture
3.3 Communication Structure
3.4 Core Functionality
3.5 Interaction Technique Library
3.6 User Interface Construction Process
4 Dynamic Space Management
4.1 Empty Space Representation
4.2 Adding a Box
4.3 Deleting a Box
4.4 Performance Analysis
5 Layout Policy Techniques
5.1 Space Allocation Issues
5.1.1 Application Requirements
5.1.2 User Interface Requirements
5.1.3 User Requirements
5.2 Policy Types
5.3 Policy Description
5.4 Space Allocation Framework
5.5 Layout Policy Design
5.5.1 Relative Position Policy
5.5.2 Grouping Policy
5.6 Multiple Policies Implementation
6 Evaluation
6.1 Example Application
6.2 Discrete Event Simulator
6.3 User Interface Specification
6.4 Automatic Layout Techniques
7 Further Development
7.1 Application domains
7.1.1 Scientific Visualizations
7.1.2 Information Rich Virtual Environment………
Source: City University of Hong Kong