On the generation of interactive iconic environments

Iconic languages have been frequently used in human-computer interfaces. Although the syntax of simple iconic languages may be intuitively suggested by the icons themselves, an unexperienced user might find it difficult to construct syntactically correct iconic sentences in a complex visual environment. The paper presents a technique or the generation of interactive syntax-directed iconic environments. The user can easily interact with the generated iconic environment thanks to an underlying syntactic mechanism which suggests both the current feasible set of icons and their feasible positions on the screen. We have implemented a prototype tool based on this technique and used it experimentally to generate several practical iconic environments, (c) 1999 Academic Press