rcs@SEI.CMU.EDU (rCs) (10/03/90)
The Software Engineering Institute announces the Serpent User Interface
Management System, Alpha Release 0.9. Serpent is available via anonymous ftp
from fg.sei.cmu.edu (128.237.2.163) and can be found in /pub/serpent. There
is a small README file and a large (~2.6 MB) compressed tar file called
serpent.tar.Z. See the README file to get started.
Serpent is also available on expo.lcs.mit.edu (18.30.0.212) in /contrib. It is
also called serpent.tar.Z, but the README file is named serpent.README.
Serpent Alpha Release 0.9 represents a significant change over Alpha Release
0.8, in terms of enhanced capabilities, the addition of the entire Motif
Widget set, significant performance improvements, a universal input/output
technology integrator, and the Serpent Editor. There are also some new Athena
and Motif demonstrations.
Serpent represents a new generation of User Interface Management Systems which
manage the total dynamic behavior of an interface and which allow applications
to remain uninvolved with the details of the user interface.
Serpent is a UIMS which is designed to manage the specification and dynamic
behavior of arbitrary toolkits. It provides for a fixed
application programmer interface across changes in toolkits. This allows an
application to evolve from one toolkit to another, and Serpent manages all of
the interactions between the toolkits.
There is a language which is used to describe the user interface and its
dynamic behavior. There is an editor which allows the interface to be built
using standard type drawing facilities. The language is very simple for
specifying simple interfaces ("Hello World" under Athena is reproduced in its
entirety following the text) and is powerful enough to provide for drawing and
visual programming demonstrations (both are included in the released
software).
Serpent is intended to be used either with an application (in a production
environment) or without an application (in a prototyping environment). There
is an interface description language used both by the application to describe
its interface to Serpent and by the toolkits to describe their interface to
Serpent. Applications and toolkits written in either C or Ada can be used
with Serpent, although the interface description mechanism is designed to be
extensible to other languages.
The Hello World program is:
#include "sat.ill"
|||
OBJECTS:
hello: label_widget {
ATTRIBUTES:
label_text: "Hello world";
}
The Serpent editor supports the development and maintainence
of both the presentation and interactive portions of the user
interface for both the Athena and Motif toolkits. It includes
a structure editor that supports the specification of Slang
dialogues and a wysiwyg tool that supports the graphic layout
of a subset of Athenas widgets. I would tell you more except
they are getting ready to take my machine down for overnight
backups.
The following people contributed to the development of Serpent:
Len Bass
Nancy Brenner
Mary Beth Chrissis
Steve Chou
Brian Clapper
Chris Cook
Marianne Deacon
Erik Hardy
Rick Kazman
Dan Klein
Reed Little
Tim McMahon
Roger Moos
Marc Pottier
Robert Seacord