Automated Design of Displays for Technical Data

Abstract : This paper reports on a theory of a graphical display that automatically designs tables and diagrams that represent relations occurring in technical data. The theory is based upon a small number of principles such as using visual adjacency and visual connectedness to reflect semantic relations among the data. The theory uses techniques adapted from automated programming for display reformulation and display optimization. A prototype display synthesis system that implements the theory as a set of transformation rules has been written. The system takes a relational specification as input and produces a display as output. The theory is illustrated in this paper by showing an annotated trace of the prototype generating a large number of tables and diagrams from relational technical data. The examples show the generation of displays from aircraft maintenance technical data that is free of all formatting and display instructions. (KR)