Prototyping user interfaces for applications depicted by graphs

A tool for constructing graphical interfaces for several kinds of applications is described. The tool, called Graffiti, maintains the display of a graph representing the data of the application. The graph can be manipulated directly by the user, Such actions are linked to application operations. This tool has two components: one to describe the layout and syntactic constraints on the graph, the other to describe the layout of the user interface and the interactive dialogue with the end user. It can be used to construct or prototype such diverse pieces of software as state diagram editors, Petri nets development utilities, network simulation systems, tools for software engineering based on dataflow diagrams, etc.<>