EMUGEN is a generator for Java-Swing user interfaces. It can be used for building prototypes of user interfaces for multi-user systems from a short, formal description of the requirements. You can find information about the general approach (in english) here: http://wwweickel.in.tum.de/forschung/user-interfaces and more details about the underlying concepts (in german) here: http://tumb1.biblio.tu-muenchen.de/publ/diss/in/2002/brandl.html.

A First Example

PracticalCourse::=Student*:Students Participant*:Participants
        Supervisor String:ActualExercise
Supervisor::=String:Name
Participant::=StudentRef Solution*:Solutions
StudentRef::=Name->Student
Solution::=String:Exercise Text:Description Rating
Student::=String:Name Degree
Degree::=NoDegree |PreDegree
PreDegree::=String:Date
Rating::=VeryGood|Good|Satisfactorily|Sufficient|Deficient

    java -jar emugen.jar -fo first.emu

With the option -fo EMUGEN generates only a form based user interface to manipulate data objects for the types described above but not a multiple user interface (no multiple user functionality, no graph editor).

EMUGEN generates Java source files which needs the emu_runtime.jar runtime library. Therefore it is necessary to include the library in the classpath for compiling and executing the formular. In order to get a running formular for the data type PracticalCourse you have to start the Java compiler with the following commando (it should work if you have saved emu_runtime.jar in the current directory):

    javac -classpath .:emu_runtime.jar PracticalCoursePanel.java

As you might guess the formular for PracticalCourse is implemented/generated as a Java class with name PracticalCoursePanel saved in a file called PracticalCoursePanel.java. Since PracticalCourse is a data type of meta type tupel the associated panel class extends the runtime class emu_runtime.TupelPanel where the layout of the formular is implemented on the meta level (in the method emu_runtime.TupelPanel.formlayout()).

Now, let's start the formular for PracticalCourse. This can be simple done by the following comando (in each generated form class a test method main is generated):

    java -classpath .:emu_runtime.jar PracticalCoursePanel

In the generated main-method a instance of the data type PracticalCourse (technically: a Java object of the class PracticalCourse) is created and can be manipulated synchronously with two formulars. In order to get a feeling of how the standard interaction of the generated forms works try to add some students to the list of students and, afterwards, try to add some participants of the course. Each participant can be linked to a student with the component StudentRef.

Form Layout Refinements

form layout of PracticalCourse {:
  removeAll();
  JTabbedPane tab = new JTabbedPane();
  tab.addTab("Students",StudentsPanel);
  tab.addTab("Participants",ParticipantsPanel);
  setLayout(new BorderLayout());
  add(tab,BorderLayout.CENTER);
  add(SupervisorPanel,BorderLayout.SOUTH);
:}

element layout of Solution {:
  setText(Exercise+Rating.toString());
  setOpaque(true);
  setBackground(
    isSelected?Color.blue
    :(Rating.isVeryGood()|
      Rating.isGood()|
      Rating.isSatisfactorily()?Color.green
      :(Rating.isSatisfactorily()|
        Rating.isSufficient()|
        Rating.isDeficient()?Color.red:Color.white)));
:}

New Form Layout Language

emugen.export.DataModel emugen.Main.exportDataModel(File inputFile)

package emugen.export;
DataModel::=String:startType Prod*:productions
Prod::=String:left Type:type
Type::= {TupelProd} Component*:components
       |{VarProd} String*:alternatives
       |{ListProd} String:elementType
       |{RefProd} String:selector String:type "emugen.syntax.Formel":expr
Component::=String:type String:selector

Actions and Activity Nets

EMUGEN and Graphical Editors